My Heavenly Judgement
by colbub
Summary: Alice was normal. Unremarkable, smart-ish and... normal. So when she died, she was shocked. But it was even MORE shocking when part of her Judgment for her to go to Heaven consisted of... protecting Tsuna?
1. Once upon a death

**My second story! Yatta! Though first Katekyo fic. So... be nice? *cheesy grin***

**I hope you enjoy this story! (And oh, I don't own Katekyo. My art skills just aren't awesome enough for it to even be a possibility.) I really do hope you all enjoy this though. Truly. **

**So stopping my blabbering and starting with the story, please enjoy. ^_^**

* * *

I died.

I died a tragic and momentous death.

And I was staring at a dwarf that seemed intent on dragging me to who-knows-where.

But now I'm getting off topic. I shall now try to answer the question that must be floating around your minds (or it should be, now that I've mentioned it).

How did I die?

Well, I remember it very clearly, which is understandable as it _was_ only three hours ago, (I'm surprised I'm not in a shock induced heart attack really…)

It was a normal school day. The clouds blocking the sun and the people milling around trying to look cool (apparently it was a high-school trait) with me being typically loner in the classroom. Yes, I know, who does that these days? I mean, hanging out in the classroom at lunch?

Moving on though, I was a normal human being. I had a normal nose, normal mouth, two eyes, four limbs and a whole normal brain.

But that was the deal with me. I was _too_ normal. My hair was the exact shade of grey (I was always called granny) that blended in with the background, my eyes were grey, I wasn't tall or short (normal height, ha), fat or skinny and my skin was the normal pale.

It sucked. With me all being grey and pale, it was like I was a shadow or something. I guess I was always the side character, the one who supported the main character at important times but was never important by being _me_. The person who was forgotten after the important moment had passed.

That, sadly, practically described me in a nutshell.

But I'm getting off topic again. And to answer the question of how I died, I must introduce my best friend (though, thinking about it now, she was more like my only friend).

If I was the side character, then she was the main. She had it all, rich, pretty (more like stunning), graceful, smart, and the worst part of it, _nice._

Well, nice to anyone who didn't shove a love letter in her face.

When _that_ happened (which was pretty often really) she would push it away with a slight wrinkle of distaste on her nose and a fake smile fixed firmly in place. Then the gaggle of people who permanently surrounded her would immediately start to gossip about the newest young man who had the misfortune of giving her the love letter.

She knew as much as I did that they surrounded her for the status that everyone _craved_ for some reason. That is, except me. She was the school queen after all.

So now you all know that I was normal, and I was the best friend of the school's most perfect queen. Insignificant little me had become her friend in primary kindergarten, and we had stuck together ever since. Me because she was the only close friend who understood me, and her because she knew that I was the only person who was her friend not because of her looks and social ladder.

So now that introductions are over, I shall proceed.

On that particular day that I died, I remember it was a cloudy day, though there was still light. The clouds had looked a little heavy though and I remember that I had thought that it would rain anytime soon...

* * *

'Alice!' I hummed a response as a guy approached me with a pink letter in his hands. He reached my desk and fidgeted. 'Weeeell... can you give this to Amanda?' He thrust the letter to me.

'Why? You know she rejects every single one anyway.' I stated bluntly, not even bothering to look up from my book.

'But at least when _you_ give it to her she'll at least look at the name of the giver!' the poor, deluded guy protested. I sighed and massaged my temples.

'Ok, just put them on the pile on my desk.'

'Pile?' He questioned. Then he looked over my shoulder to see the stacks and stacks of letters on my desk. His face fell. 'Are they all...?'

'Yup. All love letters to Amanda.'

He internally struggled for a moment then put it on the pile and ran away, yelling over his shoulder that "he owed me one".

I just shook my head and kept reading.

I was pretty used to it already. I didn't attract attention, and all the attention that I would get was because of Amanda, caused by Amanda, or getting pushed out by Amanda in her (many failed) attempts to make me more social.

It was troublesome.

If I could be left to my otaku-ness and her to her social-ness, wouldn't that make the world flow easier? I flipped the page of the science text-book and kept reading about stuff that I didn't actually understand (being my own nerdy self).

Then the bell rang, and the students slowly filed into the grey room, the grey light filtering through the windows from the grey sky.

I remembered it was a very grey day. Kind of reminded me of myself.

The high pitched babbling increased from the hallway.

_Gaaaaaah, get ready for the bubble-heads... Three... two... one..._

'And, you know, like, I _totally_ think her nails are like the _ugliest_ things on _Earth_!'

'I know right? And she has such good hands as well, such a waste. Don't you agree, Amanda?'

'Yup,' said the bored voice of my friend. She would've rather sat next to me, if only I didn't scowl at her when the people trailing her babbled incessantly (which brought on a rather bad mood) so she went and sat in the cafeteria like everyone else.

That's how nice she was. She sacrificed herself to meaningless chatter for forty-five minutes so I could have peace.

'Oh look, its nerdy Alice.' A panicked look fluttered on all the faces of Amanda's female stalkers.

'_Shush! _Don't say that about Alice! She's Amanda's best friend. _Remember_?' Amanda just sighed and sat next to me, trying to ignore the people behind her who were fighting for the other seat next to her.

'And why can't I sit next to you again?' She groaned out and flicked her silky red hair, her heart-shaped face in an exasperated type of expression. I grinned.

'Because you're a lovely best friend? Anyway, here.' I dumped the love-letters on her. 'Yours.' She groaned at the pile and flicked through them.

'Not interested, you know that.'

'I know. But they went to all the trouble, why don't you look through them?' All the guys in my class turned around and gave me a thumbs up. I raised an eyebrow at them and turned my attention back to Amanda.

'Nah, if I did then I'll need a whole hour or something.' The faces of the guys fell. I shrugged. At least I tried. 'Can you _please_ hold them for me? I don't want daddy knowing this, and I don't want to waste all the paper...' She trailed off, looking hopefully at me. Her "friends" from lunch, hearing Amanda's request joined in.

'Yeah, _please?'_ They chimed, looking at Amanda for approval. I sighed and put my textbook away.

'Whatever makes you sleep at night.'

'Yay!' Amanda cheered and threw her arms around me. All the guys in the classroom immediately looked at me jealously...or probably (trying) to look down her cleavage. I slouched and looked out the window with a bored look on my face.

Yup, normal day, normal day.

The teacher walked in and clapped her hands.

'Ok, boys and girls, today we're doing trigonometry.' We all groaned, and she grinned. 'I know you all hate it, but you still need to learn it. So heads up and listen!' I looked up and complied, because I liked the teacher.

Not trigonometry. I swear that maths was made to torture us high school students who still didn't have a choice on choosing _not_ to do it.

So, with the teacher trying to elicit some enthusiastic response from us and us all trying to not fall asleep, the day passed by normally.

Everything was normal on that day. So when the normal bell rang to signify the end of the normal day, I slowly packed up, yawning my head off from the (normal) class. Amanda gave a quick wave, muttered that her chauffeur would make a fuss again if she didn't go down _now_ and quickly speed-walked down the stairs. I waved after her and lugged the heavy school bag onto my back. Then I slowly walked down the stairs, holding the stacks of love letters in my arms. There was so much, in fact, that I nearly couldn't see.

It didn't help that I didn't have a plastic bag either.

So I walked down the stairs, muttering a 'sorry' to the people I bumped into, walked down the hallway, out to the courtyard which led to the exit of the school.

I had previously mentioned I was grey right? I had always thought my grey hair was a symbol of specialty since I didn't know anyone else with grey hair, until I realised how _washed out_ it was. Unlike Amanda's vivid red, or the delicate natural blonde, it was just that.

Grey.

Just like the grey school uniform, the grey pavement, the grey sky, it was all grey. And I realised I wasn't anything special at all. Just normal.

I shifted the letters in my hands and walked out of the school, trying to look over the top of the letters. Then I slowly walked down the pavement, looked both ways (as best as I can anyway, with those letters in my face) and carefully stepped onto the road.

One of the letters dropped onto the road.

Now, you would think "Ah, this is why she dies right? Dropping a letter onto the road and trying to pick it up...'

Actually, no. I just left the letter on the road. It was going into recycling anyway. So I just stepped over it as I kept going.

Ah, but that letter. That evil, evil letter got blown a few centimetres right under my foot.

That made me slip and fall to the ground.

It was then that it had happened. A car screeched around the corner and ran towards me, clearly speeding.

Then BAM! it ran straight into me.

It wasn't like in those movies, where they would conveniently look to the side where the car was going to hit them, the eyes widened, the scream and the sick _thump_ which, you know, meant that the character would probably go to hospital. And into a coma where the boyfriend/girlfriend would hold their hands praying to wake up.

But unfortunately, this was reality. It was like

Walk, slip, fall, screech, BOOM. I never realised what hit me.

Literally.

Besides, I didn't have a boyfriend.

...But that's beside the point.

Soon, the letters were all over the place, and the driver of the car had this "_oh shit" _expression on his face. He stopped, so at least it wasn't hit and run.

Don't worry, I won't blame you, driver. I'll just laugh in your face when you need to pay my life-insurance.

But anyway, you know how at the start, I told you that it was a tragic and momentous death?

Sorry, I lied.

Just another normal-ish car accident.

I can't tell you about the time from the accident to the hospital because it was mostly like

_PAIN! painpainpain..._ etc.

Though I do remember snatches. Like through the pain it was more like

_Painpainpainpainpainpain-STOP STARING AND PHONE SOME – painpainpain –FRIGGIN HELP ALREADY! - painpainpainpain..._

So, soon enough, I was groaning in an ambulance roaring down the road at full speed, leaving the police to clean up behind.

Fun, real fun.

* * *

Someone put anaesthetic on me (I think...) because the pain stopped and black edges started appearing the edge of my vision.

I _do_ remember something like rushing down the hospital corridor, into a room where they cut up my school uniform for easier access.

And all I could think of, when I slipped into unconsciousness was how my mom would be so angry that the school uniform was ruined. And how weirdly unembarrassed I was about the whole thing of my shirt open for the world to see.

I guess hospitals just get to you.

* * *

I had this really weird 'out of body' experience where you float over your body and you watch everyone working around your body like ants over a potato chip.

It was weird, to say the least. Not the least alarming. It was just morbidly fascinating.

If spirits could turn green, I would've definitely. It was _my_ body they were working on after all. Who wouldn't get disturbed? That's where the _morbid_ comes from. And I was just going with the flow, waiting for me to go back into my body and forget about all this.

Until the most alarming comment came from one of the doctors.

'Shit, we're losing her! Defibrillator!'

'Her heart is still not working!'

'Again!'

'Unresponsive!'

I wasn't the brightest student in my grade for nothing. I knew what that meant, even if I didn't understand the medical jargon they were spouting. (My marks were the only thing not normal about me, and I was a bit proud of it. Very proud of it, in fact).

I trembled (could I tremble if I'm dead?) as the severity of the situation hit me.

I was _dying_ here. Or technically dead, if the looks of things told me correctly.

So what was I? A ghost? I thought those didn't exist!

I watched my body like a hawk, waiting for the doctors to stop buzzing around it and let it tell me that I was dead.

Dead.

_Dead._

I never thought it would happen to me this early you know? Death doesn't seem like a part of everyday life anymore, for us young ones in developed countries. Yeah, you hear about death, but you just don't connect it to your own normal life.

And a car crash. Of all the ways I thought I would die, I never thought it would be by car crash.

So I was just there, shocked (can ghosts be shocked?) until I heard a hysterical sobbing noise from the other side of the door. I floated through the door (definite proof that I wasn't solid right now) and saw my whole family.

Even little Emily, who was only three years old. My little sister was cute, with those little eyes and those hands which always waved around innocently. I always spoilt her. I wouldn't be able to see her grow up anymore, if what was behind the other side of the door was true. And for some reason, the thought hurt. I looked at the person holding her hand.

My little brother Jack (who liked to be called JK -pronounced Jay Kay- because he thought it sounded cool) who was looking shocked and disbelieving about the whole thing. He was twelve, he understood the situation perfectly.

He wasn't stupid.

My Grandmama was next, hugging my mother who was the one doing the hysterical crying. Her face was filled with worry, and a spark of hope, hoping against all her heart that I would survive I guess. Not much else to be hopeful for (unless she wanted me dead, which was highly improbable). My poor Grandmama had to survive the death of Grandpapa, and watched my aunt die in a hospital just like this one. I hope her gentle soul would be able to take this.

Mom in my Grandmama's arms looked frail and sad. Her sobbing really shocked me. (As if I wasn't shocked enough already). I always thought of her as superwoman. I had never seen her cry before.

Dad was the only one sitting down, continuously raking his hands over his dark grey hair (it was his hair I had inherited, though his had more white hairs in it), the nervous habit I knew he had when he was severely stressed or thinking hard. He had his elbows on his knees, so I couldn't see his face.

A weary doctor stepped out of the operation room, as a replacement rushed in, fresh and ready to go. He talked wearily and took off his doctor's coat for cleaning. Then he put on a fresh one and faced the expectant faces of my desperate family.

I was touched.

I really was. I would've done anything to just walk out of the operation right then and there, but I guess... it was not to be. The doctor sighed and walked towards my little family, stopping next to them so that his voice wouldn't echo down the corridor.

'I presume you're her family?' He said quietly, in a gentle way.

'Yes.' My dad raised his head, getting up and answering. 'Everyone's family here.' The doctor nodded slowly, as if trying to drag the time out, then seeing no point in it when my dad asked the dreaded question.

'How is she?' The raw desperation I heard in his voice made even my little sister, who didn't know _what _was going on, know that it wasn't the time to make a fuss.

'Her heart stopped.' The doctor said bluntly, though somehow still gentle at the same time. My mother heard it through her sobbing and seemed to collapse inside. Like a tap, she just stopped crying.

Somehow that reaction made me worry even more about her.

My Grandmama's face crumpled, the little spark of hope stamped mercilessly by his words. My brother gave a small jerk, and his face paled. Maybe reality was catching up with him too. I would never know.

My little sister was looking around innocently, not getting why everyone was acting like so.

'But we are trying our best. Many have survived worse injuries than this, and modern technology has made survival rates soar.' The doctor said consolingly. A voice came out interrupting the doctor, not one I was expecting.

'What injuries does she have?' My brother spoke out, his voice only quivering a little. I gave him credit. If I was in his situation, I would've been a shocked blubbering fool already.

The doctor looked at my dad, and he nodded.

'The main injuries were mostly centred around her head, her ribs and spinal cord. Even if she survives this surgery, she might not have full control of her legs, or maybe no sensation at all. Six broken ribs and a broken arm, fractures around her collar bone. Brain damage and some minor injuries around the cranium...' He reeled off.

'Enough. Thank you.' My Grandmama said firmly. He nodded, asked politely if there was anything else we wanted and walked off.

I sat with them, and after half-an hour, the operation sign flicked off. My whole family stood as one (with the exception of Emily who was asleep). The doctors and nurses who walked out saw my family and shook their heads.

What seemed like the head doctor came to my family.

'Your daughter?'

'Yes.' He seemed saddened.

'Your daughter...'

'Alice.'

'Your daughter Alice... did not make it. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry. We worked on her even after her heart monitor stopped until we realised it was pointless to continue. We're very sorry.' My dad nodded stiffly.

'It's fine. Thank you for all your efforts. Can... Can we see her?'

'She's already been wheeled to the morgue. We can give your request consideration.'

'No, it's fine. Maybe it's better that way... Do you mind if we stay here a little?'

'No, not at all.'

'Thank you.'

And with that the doctor left, leaving behind me grieving family and me, who was now technically a ghost.

I sat with them awhile, next to Jack. I didn't know what to do after all. They couldn't see me, hear me... I suddenly straightened.

Could they feel me? I've heard of stories where ghosts communication with family straight after death (I never believed them, but what better time than now?) I reached out to Jack and he jolted, and rubbed his arms. I grinned, my fingers still on his skin. Then he blinked at me. And rubbed his eyes, his arm leaving contact with my hand.

'I'm seeing things. She's not here anymore. She's dead.' With those words, his eyes suddenly filled up with tears, and started streaming down his cheeks. He put his hands up to his eyes and furiously wiped them, tyring to stop the flow. I gave a startled exclamation and engulfed him in a transparent type of hug. He eyes widened. I still didn't understand how he felt me though.

'I-i-is that you...?'

'Yeah.'

'Why can I see you?'

'I'm a ghost. You can decide if I'm a figment of your imagination or not I guess.'

'So maybe this is all a dream?' He pinched himself and winced. I let go of him and his eyes widened. 'Where are you?' He said desperately but softly, as if he was afraid that if he talked to loudly it would scare me away. I touched his arm again and smiled the brightest I could.

'Here. Duh. As if I would ever leave any of you.' He smiled, his tears still streaming. He wiped them again. The tears had never stopped.

'So you'll be our guardian angel?' I shrugged.

'Nah. With my physical skills, I would probably put you all in more accidents than save you from them.'

'I don't mind.'

'Where'd the annoying little brother go?' I tried to ruffle his hair like usual but my fingers went through his hair. I frowned.

'Hey, if I can talk to you, do you think...' I pointed to the rest. Mother was still shell-shocked, her eyes blank. At least this way... maybe I could shock her out of it. He nodded.

'Try.'

'Gather them all up so I can touch you all.' So Jack obediently stood up and tugged my whole little family into a circle. They went with it, too shocked to protest, even Emily (who had woken up by then). And so I stepped right into the middle of the circle and touched them all, since that seemed to be the way to let them see me.

'Alice?' My mom's eyes lost their blank look and tried to reach for me. But her arm went right through. I stared at the arm and tried not to be too disturbed, thinking at least it was my _mom's_ arm in my stomach and not some random doctor's...

'I'm a ghost now, so listen up. Don't mope, cry, and be depressed. Move on. I'll be waiting for you all when you're all old and wrinkly so that I can laugh at you with my sixteen year old youthful looks. Ok?'

They needed direction right now. So I was giving them one.

They nodded mutely.

'Good. Emily, I want you to take the shake shake snow-globe you like.' She nodded, not quite getting it.

'And the rest of you just get what you need. Bye. Live your life to the fullest, as cheesy as it sounds.'

'Alice... you're not our imagination?'

'Maybe. I don't know.' Then Jack's eyes widened.

'You're fading!' I looked at myself. Not much difference I could see.

'Then bye. I guess I'm getting summoned or something. To whatever's after death.'

'Don't go!' I looked at him as if he was a moron.

'Of course I'll go. Then when you go up, I can greet you sipping hot chocolate. So don't mess up, Kay?' But their eyes had become unfocused, not looking at me anymore and I realised they couldn't see me anymore.

I shook my head in confusion. One minute they could see me, and the next minute they couldn't. What was happening?

Was I really dead?

I shook my head. That was impossible. The pain I had felt was real.

So... I was dead.

Strange how easily lives can be snuffed out, a little detached part of my brain said. The larger part was mostly shocked.

'So you're my newest ward huh?' A gruff voice came behind me. I spun around and saw...

A dwarf.

And this brings me to a full circle, back to the beginning.

Funny how many things go around in a circle huh?

But back to the dwarf.

He inspected me.

'I guess you'll do.' Then he started dragging me. I tried to dig my feet into the floor for my feet to just go _through _the floor.

'Where are you taking me?' He gave me a look, as if I was dumb.

I was _not _stupid. It made me miffed.

'For your Judgement of course. To go to Heaven?' He stopped. 'You _do_ want to go to Heaven right?'

I just blinked.

My Heavenly Judgment?

* * *

**Ok, if that was boring, I'm sorry! TT_TT I need to introduce all the concepts first, so please bear with me! If anything was confusing, please give a review, if you liked it, please review, if you didn't like it... review? ^^ A review solves everything! She'll go into KHR soon... **

**And thank you for reading this! Hehe...**


	2. There was a girl

**Since I update weekly, why not for this one as well?**

**I thank all you reviewers. TT_TT IT FEELS SO NICE TO BE LOVED! And favouriters. And story-alerters. (but review people, I want to know your opinion.)**

**And with no further ado... Please enjoy! *bows***

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I looked at the dwarf.

'Heavenly Judgement?' I asked, even sounding stupid to myself.

'Yes. You know, the Judgement you get to see if you deserve Heaven or not?' He said grumpily. His grip on me tightened and I looked at his hand wonderingly.

'Why can I feel you as if you were solid?' I asked. He grunted and scowled.

'Of course. I'm an Angel.' I stopped short.

'_You're _an Angel?' I looked at him disbelievingly. He let go of my arm and turned fully towards me for the first time.

'What's with the disbelief?' He asked rudely. I just kept staring.

He looked like one of those cute old dwarfs you found as garden gnomes, only he was about up to my hip and looked _much_ smarter. He was wearing a baggy jumper and baggy pants with no cap, which showed his gleaming bald head. If I was still alive, I would've just thought he was a midget grandpa.

A fat short midget grandpa.

'You don't seriously expect me to go waltzing around with just a white sheet and a harp do you? That's for the young ones, not ones with a figure like mine...' He continued, and I stared at his bulk.

Yes, he definitely wasn't fit for a white toga.

'...And besides, I like wearing twenty-first century clothing.' I opened my mouth to stop his mini speech.

'Did you say something about a Judgement? Isn't there a Judgement Gate or something for us people?' His face settled into a scowl again, as if reminded of an unpleasant fact.

'You humans are too overpopulated. The waiting line for the Judgement Gate right now is approximately ten-thousand years.' My mouth gaped. 'They're still sorting through the people from World War 2.'

'_World War 2.' _I said disbelievingly.

'Yeah. And it doesn't help that you humans are always fighting and stuff. The line grew and grew and grew until the higher ups decided us Specialty Angels needed to help out as well.'

'Specialty Angels?' He sighed at my question.

'Can we get away from the hospital first? I don't really like them.' I glanced at my family and subconsciously drew closer to them.

'But, my family...'

'You'll need to leave them sooner or later. Why not now?' I looked at my family, who were still in their little circle, crying. Then I looked at the little Dwarf (I couldn't make myself say Angel).

'But...' He groaned and just reached out a hand. And before I knew it, I was in a comfortable sofa with a fireplace in front of me. I blinked and looked around. All around the sofa were shelves and shelves of books. It was all really well-lit too, as if sunlight was filtering softly down, lighting everything.

'Where?'

'Are you reduced to one word sentences now? Great.' I turned around fully in my chair to see the Dwarf teetering around with a stack of books in his hand. He put them all on the table with a little 'humph!' and turned towards me. Then he disappeared and I looked around wildly just to see he was in another sofa that I didn't remember being there before, sipping tea.

'My family?'

'Is fine.'

'Specialty Angels?' He grunted and put down his tea.

'I had hoped you would forget about that.' He grimaced when a splash of tea spilt on his finger as he 'put it down.

'Well?'

'No point in dragging it out I guess. You see all these books?' He waved his arm around. I nodded. 'I'm the Angel of BL.' He said proudly. I frowned.

'You're the Angel of Boy Love?' His eyes widened. He spluttered, choking.

'_What?'_

'BL is short for Boy Love, isn't it?'

'No! I'm the Angel of Books and Literature, eejit!'

'_Oh._' I said, understanding. He massaged his temples and muttered something under his breath. Then he coughed.

'Anyway, there are Specialty Angels in the world. Specialty Angels,' he said seriously and looked up, to check if I was listening 'are Angels that are assigned to a particular area. For example, there are Angels of Food, Agriculture, Toiletry...'

'Toiletry?' I questioned. I never realised toiletry was important... He just frowned at me for interrupting. I shut up.

'As I was saying before you _rudely _interrupted, there are many angels. So when we had just cleaned up the mess you humans made when you had WW1, you had to go and do WW2. Afterwards, the mess became messier and messier until the higher ups ordered us Specialty Angels to get to work.'

'Why weren't you working?' I asked. His face settled into his scowl again.

'We _were_ working. My friend Cedar had to work overtime because of you humans lopping them down all the time. He's the Specialty for Trees, see.'

'Oh.'

'We don't get along well, but we're still friends. Since books are made from trees and all. Anyway, we were ordered to take care of new arrivals, to let them do our own Judgement to see if _we_ think newly arrived spirits are good or bad.'

'So that's why I'm with you.' He nodded.

'Yes. You're lucky in that aspect. If you had died a moment later, then you would've been picked up by the Specialty for Torture and Disease. Her Judgement requires you to tell her all the bad things you've done. And if you tell a lie...' He trailed off ominously. I gulped and choked on my spit.

Smart, real smart.

'Then what does your Judgement entail?' After my hacking session had ceased. He nodded approvingly.

'At least you aren't blubbering like the last one before you.' He paused and started talking again. 'I give you another chance to live.'

I straightened. I could see my family again? I thought of my mother, dad, Grandmama, Jack and little Emily all standing in that little lonely circle.

'I-I get to see my family again?' I said hopefully. His eyes widened.

'No!' I fell back into my seat deflated. No? 'I send you into another world to live again. Do you know that every book is a little world?'

'No...'

'Your world's a book too you know.' I raised my eyebrows, too tired to do anything else.

'Really?'

'Yes. It's called "The Tales of Earthland." I can't let you see it though, sorry.'

'It's ok.'

'So my judgment is that you get sent to another world to live, with a requirement you need to fulfil. If you fulfil the requirement I set you, and I judge that you didn't show any signs of being an evil mass murderer or anything of that sort, you get to go to Heaven after your time limit.'

My brain immediately started whirring.

'Time limit.' I stated.

'Yes, time limit.' He nodded, reinforcing the statement. 'I send you to the world into a body equivalent to your body at eight years old so that you have time to adjust. And you have to complete the task, or do the task as best as you can by the age you died.'

'Then I have about... eight years?'

'Yes.'

'Will I be able to see my family afterwards?'

'If you and they all get to Heaven, yes.'

I remembered stating I would wait for them drinking hot chocolate in heaven.

And if I didn't get to heaven, would that... not let me see my family ever again? I stared into the fireplace, thinking about it.

Besides, there wasn't much of a choice anyway.

'Then I'll do it.'

'Good thinking. What world do you want to go into?' He spread the books he had previously put on the table before. I stared at them blankly. I've never even _heard _of all the titles except two.

One was Shakespeare's _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.

No.

Absolutely not. I will _not_ prance around with faeries and love-struck fools for eight years. So I looked at the other option.

The other, surprisingly, was a series I was very familiar with. Reborn's beady eyes peered at me from the cover of the first book, his gun/Leon gleaming. The art looked very out of place surrounded by fancy looking ancient tome-things. I pointed at that one. The Dwarf looked at it and nodded.

'I can send you there. Last spot too.'

'Last spot?'

'I can only shove fifty people into a world at any one time you know. There were forty-nine, you're the fiftieth. Don't worry, the others will help you settle in and fill you in with necessary details.' He muttered to himself a bit, fancy maths stuff.

I left him to it for awhile until a question suddenly popped into my brain.

'Dwarf?'

'Call me Bill.' He said unexpectedly. 'Yeah?'

Bill? What relation did that have with books? I secretly puzzled over it for awhile until I voiced out my question.

'Err... Bill? Is the world real? Or is it just a book?' He gave me a blank look.

'Are you a book?'

'I don't think so.'

'They aren't a book either. Their world is as real as yours. So never think of it any other way.' He said seriously. I nodded.

'Umm... Ok. When am I going?'

'Now.' He said offhandedly. I blinked.

'What?'

'You heard me.' He raised one arm up and clicked his fingers. I didn't feel any different until I realised the books were slowly fading. Bill was too.

'Oh! I forgot to tell you!' I immediately sprang to attention. Bill seemed like an absentminded sort of person.

'What?'

'Don't fall in love!' I relaxed and laughed. That was it?

'Why?'

'It complicates things.' I grinned.

'I won't. In all my life I haven't had _one _single crush, so it's ok in that aspect.' He was still mouthing something, but I couldn't hear him.

And everything faded away until everything was white. Then suddenly I felt like I was being shrunk, compacted, without it _hurting_ and afterwards...

I just remembered white.

* * *

'A new arrival!'

'He or she?'

'Female!'

'Poor thing, she must be so shocked after dying. Bill just doesn't know how to comfort people.' There were some laughs and some mutters of agreement there.

'What number's she?'

'The fiftieth one.'

'Oh, so she's the last one until one of us disappears?'

'I wonder if she knows her mission.'

'I doubt it. I have her requirement letter here.'

'How could you steal it? Give it back!'

'Fine fine...'

I groaned, the multitude of voices digging into my brain like spears.

'Oh, she's awake!'

'Don't crowd her peoples.'

I slowly opened my eyes to see a circle of expectant faces surrounding me. A girl who looked around my age when I died squealed.

'She's so _cute!'_

'You say that every time, Liza.' Liza, I presumed, just shook her fist at the guy who had rebuked her and took my hand. I squinted. They all had really bright coloured eyes...

Bright as in, burn your eyes type of colours. Bright lime green, extra shiny looking fluoro orange... And the strange thing was that the eyes didn't seem out of place. I shook my head a little, trying to dislodge the weird buzzing sound in my ears.

'Are you ok?'

'If you think my brain feeling like jelly being pulverised by sledgehammers fine, then yes.' A pause and the room (or whatever I was in) filled with laughter.

'I like you girly!'

'Hilarious, hilarious dude!'

'Welcome to the Family!'

'Stop it! You're crowding her!' The girl's voice, I presume Liza, scolded them. Then she hugged me, and lifted me easily.

Oh. I forgot I was technically eight years old now...

'Let's get you into your bedroom and we can talk about your mission and the tiny little details that Bill always forgets when he explains stuff.'

Mission? Then I remembered the requirement I needed to finish for me to go to Heaven and nodded. She strode out of the room, up the stairs and into a hallway. I marvelled at the rich accessories and the plush carpeting.

They were obviously very rich.

Liza opened the door to a random room and I gaped at what I saw.

There was an abundance of _everything_. Everything was either expensive or ultra expensive. Expensive looking chandeliers, expensive looking pillows, expensive looking bed, expensive looking vases... As Liza set me down, I stared at the room.

'I can't sleep in this... I'll probably ruin the carpeting.' I muttered. Liza laughed and led me to the bed, where she lifted me up onto it. I stroked it wondrously. It was so _soft_.

'That's what I thought so too when I first came here. Then you get used to it. But just don't get too spoilt!' She playfully wagged her finger at me. I smiled at her and she squealed. 'You're just so _cute!' _she squealed, squishing me to her chest.

I choked and she let go.

'Sorry! Forgot about my strength for a bit there.' She coughed awkwardly and straightened herself out. 'Now, let's cover the details shall we? Can I see your mission letter?' I looked at the slightly crumpled letter in my hand.

'The requirement letter? The requirement I need to fulfil to go to Heaven right?'

'Yeah, that. We just call it mission. Can I see it?' she repeated. I nodded and gave it to her. She read out loud.

'Name: Alice -

Abilities: Normal, Reflexes: Normal, Sight: Normal, Hearing: Normal, Intellect: Above Average, Looks: Normal'

She raised her eyebrows.

'At least you're _normal_' she said teasingly. I pouted and looked away. She kept reading.

'Age of Death: Sixteen.' She gasped and looked at me with sorrow. 'You were so young!' I shrugged and she kept going.

'Cause of Death: Car crash' She stopped again, her face holding a worried expression. But she kept reading anyway.

'Requirement for Passage to Heaven: Protect one Sawada Tsunayoshi.' I jerked.

_What? _

She looked at me surprised.

'You know Sawada Tsunayoshi? Who is he?' I looked at her weirdly. She didn't know? Weren't we in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn world? She interpreted my look correctly and explained.

'It seemed like we all came from different alternate dimensions. For one, my mission was to become friends with the Bovino family's head.'

'_Bovino._' I said as I stared at her.

Like, Lambo Bovino, Bovino?

'Yes! Weapon specialists they are. Anyway, it just happened the book I had read before I died contained him as a main character, so it fitted well. I guess the book you read contained Tsunayoshi as the main character?'

'It was a series, and yes, Tsuna was the main character...' I said absent-mindedly. I never really thought there _were _alternate dimensions out there. I was so surprised!

'So what mafia family does he hail from?'

'He's destined to be the Vongola family's tenth boss...' I said vaguely. She whistled, impressed in spite of herself.

'You struck big. Vongola is one of the best families out there. Not to mention part of the alliance and is _the _most powerful... Oh, and don't worry about being heaps older than Tsunayoshi. He'll be the same age as you.' I nodded at the knowledge and asked a question.

'So are you part of the Bovino family?' Liza laughed.

'No! If you want to join a mafia family, its fine, but we are our own unofficial family, see?' I shook my head, indicating I didn't see. She laughed again, her laugh echoing against the ceiling.

Yes, _echoed. _That was how big the room was.

'Well, because most people here had early deaths, we kept on disappearing.'

I thought about that sentence for awhile until I remembered that Bill had said something about us leaving our second life the age we died which, for me, would be sixteen...

'So we made ourselves into a little special group. We are an unofficial "family". We are information collectors.'

'Huh?'

'Yeah, we give out information for money. That's why everything's so rich here. Because we are the Number One information gatherers anywhere. The first ten people who came to this world were around the time of the first Vongola boss, you get what I'm saying?' I nodded for her to continue.

'So those ten people started gathering information. I'm saying to you, Alice, that because we have died once and we do not _belong _to this dimension that we have a remarkable lack of presence.'

I blinked and processed the information. It made sense, in a warped way. I nodded for her to go on.

'We are those people who are forgotten in the corner. We're also able to move quietly. So that's why we can get _any_ information. And I tell you, some information is very valuable. Like millions and millions type of valuable.'

She let the information sink into my brain until she started babbling again.

'That's why we have these eyes.' She pointed to her eyes. Yes, I had noticed that everyone that had crowded me had really bright coloured eyes. Her eyes were a bright pink. Not like rabbit type of pink, but shiny _hot_ pink. And it looked _natural. _Oh the horror. 'Our eyes make us memorable. They're required.'

'Why?'

'If we didn't have these eyes, then they would forget our conversation after two minutes. These eyes make them remember us like normal.'

'Ah.' I nodded in understanding.

'That's also why we're dubbed as the "Brighteye" Family. Our eyes miss nothing, and they're also "bright". Get it?' She laughed at her joke.

I chuckled politely.

'You can check your eye colour later. I have to tell you how we "disappear". Going to Heaven type of thing.' I nodded seriously.

She coughed.

'Our trial finishes the age we die our first time. How we disappear to go to heaven is the same. For example, you died of a car crash, so when you're sixteen in _this_ world, you'll die by car crash as well. Unless you're lucky, and you get a two-year extension. That's rare though. I died from cancer when I was twenty-six...' She trailed off, her eyes sad.

'So you've been here for eight years?' guessing her age to be around sixteen (outwardly).

'Yes. You'll officially start your mission when you're thirteen. Do you know where Tsunayoshi is?'

'Japan, Nanimori.'

'Ok, so you train from now to then, learn Japanese and when you reach thirteen you go to Nanimori Japan and meet Tsunayoshi.' I fidgeted, reached out behind me to grab a pillow and hugged it to my chest.

'What does _training_ mean?'

'Oh, just learning how to gather top secret information from organisations and learning how to manage our worldwide information network. Hacking is essential, as well as good reflexes.' I stared at her disbelievingly.

_Just_ managing a worldwide information network. _Just_ getting top secret information.

'It's all pretty easy.' She added.

Huh. _Easy_ she says.

'What's important is your mission. Your mission is the "unfinished" type, which means you need to keep your mission going until you reach your "disappearance" date. Some are just one-time things, like delivering a package to someplace somewhere, and afterwards, you just need to flob around getting money.'

'Ah.' I nodded.

'So why don't you commence training now?'

'_Now.' _I said disbelievingly.

'Yeah! You don't really look so tired!'

'_Now.' _I just repeated, dead-pan look on my face.

'Don't look at me like that! Let's go! I'll give you a tour while at it.'

'_Now.'_

'Yes!' She dragged me off the bed and dragged me to the door. 'This room is yours now by the way, so be glad!'

'Yay.' I said oh-so-enthusiastically. She just shrugged and muttered something like "_teenagers these days..."_ and kept on walking.

We walked past so many rooms. Like hundreds and hundreds of rooms. I sighed and bunched up my forehead in a frown.

'I'm supposed to remember all this?'

'Yes! Don't worry, you'll get used to it soon.'

Huh. _Soon _she says. _Just_ she says.

'This is the training room! This area trains your reflexes.' She opened a door and a knife whizzed by my nose. My eyes were widened in shock.

'Liza! Don't open the door like that! Two millimetres more and I would've chopped her nose off!'

'Sorry, sorry! Anyway, this is your reflexes teacher, Jack.' I gulped as an image of my little brother popped into my brain. I half-expected a grown up version of my brother, but a guy with silver eyes and brown hair in a ponytail waved. 'And the room after are hacking lessons and the room after _that_ is normal lessons and how to handle your own information network.'

'Normal lessons?'

'Like maths.' I groaned. It seems like maths will haunt even my days of _death_.

'Liza, why don't you bring her into the rooms instead of just describing?'

'Oh, because she has a lesson with you right now.'

'Oh. _Hehehehehehe_...' He chuckled evilly. I gulped and stepped back. 'How good are your reflexes girly?'

'Alice.'

'Well, Alice?'

'Normal, the report tells us.' Liza describes helpfully (not).

'That's good. At least it doesn't say slow. Catch.' He threw something wooden really fast at me. I only managed to catch it, (though I nearly dropped it). My small child hands nearly didn't fit around it. 'Oh, not bad. Now, whack away these babies with that.'

'Babies?' I looked at his hands and saw knives. Like meat cleaver type knives.

'Let's start, baby!' He crowed happily, the knives seeming to gleam evilly in the light.

'WHAAAAAAAAAT?' I never even finished my scream when the first knife came at me. I stared at Jack's face. I think his eyes had a Reborn gleam to them.

...

I finally understand how Tsuna feels like.

* * *

**^ ^ Hoped you like that! Alice is going to meet Tsuna next chapter, I hope. Hehe, please review?**

**(anything confusing, dislike, or you like, please review. It nearly solves everything, I swear!) ^^**


	3. Who met a certain Dame

**Third chapter already! I must thank all of my reviewers! And story-alerters and favouriters! (my sister for beta-ing. She is awesome, I tells ya...) You are all so kind... TT_TT**

**And stopping my blabbering, here's the most current installment...**

**

* * *

**

'I can't believe...' sobs were heard '...that little Alice...' more sobs were heard '... is thirteen and going to Japan already!'

'Liza, stop it.'

'B-b-but!' She wailed. I groaned.

I seemed to have retained my sixteen year old mentality. Liza mentioned that we never grow from the time we died, unless you get that two-year extension time for your mission. _Then _your mentality grows up.

Just for two years though.

Sometimes I wish I could grow up, wondering what would've happened if that evil conniving letter didn't drop onto the road, me being bashed into a car that (a report sent from Bill said) had been speeding over twenty kilometres/hour over the speed limit.

What done was done though. The only thing to do now was to reach Heaven so I could greet my family when _they_ died. But in the meantime, I seemed to have formed some type of attachment for these fools over here. I reached up and patted Liza on the head.

'I promised I would send emails now, didn't I?'

'But it's like seeing my own child go out on a drastic suicidal adventure! Don't gooooooo!'

I just continued patting her head like she was a puppy, the private aeroplane behind me waiting patiently to take me to Japan. Apparently, all filthy rich underworld families (not really underworld... sometimes desperate governments approached us too) all had private aeroplanes.

'Go, baby! Do us proud!' A voice called out.

I stared at Spartan Teacher Number One, aka Jack.

'If you ever need money, just go and hack the websites I gave you and get the required information. There is no time limit, and the worth is approximately ten thousand, not much but sufficient.' I looked at Spartan Teacher Number Two, who was my computer teacher.

She was a mild looking woman, her eye colour a bright lime green. But don't let her looks fool you; she drilled me from a technologically deficient idiot into a decent-ish hacker in four years. And she was _scary_ to boot.

And ruthless.

The worst human combination possible was right in front of my eyes.

'Don't do anything rash now. Remember your lessons! You should be about having a degree level in everything, so academics are fine. Remember the code for accessing the information network is...'

'I know, stop babying me. Just because I'm number fifty in the household.' I huffed out.

Spartan Teacher Number Three wasn't actually Spartan. It's just because my other two teachers are Spartan that I call him Spartan Teacher Number Three. He was more like a dad anyway, worrying all the time. He took care of academics (he died at ninety-three years old, so he technically is over a hundred by now...) and all the tiny little details the others didn't care to tell me. He had bright orange eyes, a burn your eyes type of colour, so he put sunglasses all the time.

It seemed like the lack of presence thing didn't affect others with a lack of presence so it was (mostly) fine in the house. The _maids_ however...

They just always forgot to clean his room.

Liza was just being Liza. So I wasn't overly worried about her.

I hopped out of Liza's hug, gave a wave to the others and ran up the stairs into the plane. Liza wailed even louder, waving a white handkerchief as if it was an old western movie and I was going out to war. Then they got ushered away, and driven away from the aeroplane by a bus.

I got bowed in by the staff and politely pushed to a living room. I looked out the window, and unwittingly my reflection.

I never told you what colour eyes I had, right? Well... my eyes had changed from grey to an eye-burning yellow.

...

Ok, not eye-burning, I might have been exaggerating a little, but a bright yellow. If my pupils were slit, I would probably look like a cat. I was _not_ a happy child when I first saw my eyes. Others said it was pretty (Spartan Teacher Number Three always said at least it was better than _orange_) while I thought it was horrible.

It was like I had torches shining out of my eyes, for Heaven's sake!

'Miss, the plane is ready to leave.' A random person came up to me and said.

'Let's go then.' I said. He bowed and left.

It was strange to be called "Miss". But then, as Liza said, you kind of get used to it after awhile. I was still happy to leave the too opulent room I had been put into however. They promised me that they had paid for a room at a _normal_ hotel in Japan for me to live. I was looking forward to the normality. They had been all for buying a mansion filled with servants and huge grounds.

I shot down the idea with a quick _no._ Spartan Teacher Number Two only wanted the house so that she could flaunt her wealth (she was a sometimes miser) at the other people anyway. The only argument that worked was that it would be too far away from my mission (thank goodness Tsuna doesn't live in the rich districts) and that it might scare him away.

They had only nodded begrudgingly though. Their eyes had that sneaky planning feel to it though. I can't help but feel suspicious...

The aeroplane started to rise, and I started to feel sleepy. I had been planning to rehash on my Japanese, which I had been learning for the past five years just for this moment. But I guess it was good to sleep anyway, just to get rid of jetlag when I reached there.

So I closed my eyes and slept.

* * *

And they called this _normal_.

I stared at the five-star hotel in front of me, the door-opener person opening the car door for me and politely stepping aside. The little tiny lights that always seemed to indicate rich and modern shined on the roof above me, held up by impressive pillars. Glass doors stood wide and tall, with people constantly buzzing in and out, all looking rich and snobby. Polished looking butler looking people were everywhere, leading people in, out, around. We had previously driven through a large garden, and the large gravel driveway was filled to the brim with expensive cars. Huge stone steps lead up and up...

And I wasn't even _inside_ yet.

I just stepped in, climbing the stairs and entering the glass door, trusting the driver that Liza provided to tell who I was to the guy that was supposed to be getting my luggage up to whatever apartment they had paid for.

_Ugh, I thought I emphasised __**normal**_**. **_Just imagine what I would've had if I didn't._

I gulped.

_Imagine what the __**mansion**__would've been like. _I imagined my family (in this world). They were all for going over the top. I looked around appreciatively then. All of a sudden, the chandeliers didn't seem so garish.

_Suddenly, this hotel doesn't seem too bad..._

The guy in the reception desk had this snooty look on his face when he saw the person approaching his desk was just a normal-dressed child and not a rich important person to suck up to.

'What are you doing here, little girl? Where are your parents?' he said to me, to his credit, in a perfect bland voice. I gave him _my_ perfected bland gaze.

'My name is Alice Brighteye, and I want to get my room keys.' I said loudly so my voice could carry over the high counter. The room immediately fell silent at my words, and all the people stopped to stare at me. The receptionist had a goggle eyed look on his face as he took in my normal appearance and my too bright eyes.

As I withstood the staring, I remembered something Spartan Teacher Number Three had told me once...

'_Our family is famous, in the underworld. And important political families. And rich important families as well.' He tapped his chin. 'Actually, basically anyone rich or important would know the name Brighteye. So be prepared for some major sucking up when you go outside publicly.'_

'_We're not __**that**__famous are we?'_

'_Ha, you don't know do you?' He shuddered. 'You'll experience it soon. I remember my first mission outside... Just don't say I didn't warn you. At least one thing you don't have to worry about is assassination attempts. They're too scared to kill a Brighteye, because we can easily track them down and kill them, so you can rest in that matter.'_

_I looked at him jokingly._

'_You're kidding.'_

I had just shrugged and laughed back then. Now I realised that it was most likely true from the looks I was getting (seriously, I felt like a piece of meat).

The receptionist immediately dropped his snooty behaviour and smiled sickeningly sweet. 'Of course, Miss Brighteye. Here is the card for your apartment.'

'Thank you.' When I turned around, I was immediately surrounded by people who hadn't even bothered to look at me.

'Ah, your name is Alice?'

'You're so cute! Do you want to come over to our apartment sometime to chat?'

'I love your... pant thing! You must come and share your fashion secrets, and while at it, we'll talk! I would like a favour, really.' I looked at my "pant thing". Jeans, normal normal jeans. They're so rich they don't even know what jeans were?

'All-right now! Don't crowd Brighteye-sama!'

_Brighteye-sama? Where is this, Japan?_

_..._

_Oh wait, this is Japan..._

I looked at the direction of the voice and was surprised to see the driver. He was about sixty, had a grandfatherly look about him. He blended in perfectly though, having a nice crisp suit. When he reached me, he gently steered me towards the elevator doors.

'I was directed to assist Brighteye-sama in case this occurred. Please do not take my actions as rude.'

'No prob. It's fine.' Good old Liza.

He put the card into a slot a pressed the button to the top floor. My heart sank.

'Don't tell me. I'm in the penthouse suite.'

'Yes.' I groaned and resisted the urge to bash my head. I wanted to be _normal_ dammit! I'd never thought I would say that, but it's true! 'It was in your best interests, as this hotel has one of the best security systems, and no-one else can bother you by knocking the door. So please enjoy your stay.'

'Yeah. I'm sure I will.' I said sarcastically, thinking about the people down stairs.

The elevator reached to floor, and I pulled the card out to step into a suite. Then the driver bowed perfectly and the elevator doors closed.

I wasn't bothered to explore. I was more eager to show up in time for the Nanimori Open Day where I would officially enrol and placed in the same class as Tsuna. So I took out my carry bag, which Liza had shoved against me before she had burst out crying.

_For later use, she had said. So, I should open it now right?_

I opened the bag to see...

Tonnes and tonnes of colour contact lens. I grinned. Of course! They would all forget about me if I didn't show my eyes! That presence thingy they had always stressed about, Spartan Teacher Number Two's rants about how they always forgot about her after two minutes if she put on her colour contacts...

I quickly put them on in the bathroom, accidently stinging my eyes in the mean time, and went to the elevator that was put aside for the exclusive use of the penthouse apartment. I went in and pushed to number 8. The doors opened on floor 8 and I quickly walked to the normal elevator to go to ground level.

When I stepped out onto the marble floor of the grand foyer, I was kind of creeped out to see that there was a crowd of people outside the penthouse elevator exit. I secretly thanked my ingenious idea of swapping elevators and stepped out, went into the car I had come here in and directed the driver to go to the street near the Nanimori School.

I gave a little breath of relief when I escaped the hotel.

**

* * *

Open day for new students was a grand affair in the suburb of Nanimori. They had class reps trying to look professional showing the students and parents around, stalls set up with refreshments and mini snacks, cheerful parents of students who were already attending answering questions side-by-side with teachers, the works.**

Reading the report provided by Spartan Teacher Two, it was because they needed to attract students. There were two primaries in the Nanimori, and so the two schools had a "healthy" rivalry with each other.

Huh. More like obsessive.

Though having two schools made sense. Tsuna didn't see many of his future friends, did he? Except for Yamamoto, he never really did seem to be familiar with anyone before meeting them with Reborn...

When I had arrived at the school with the driver (I had found from the trip that he was actually one of Liza's personal butlers. Apparently Liza was afraid I'd get mobbed and ordered him to take care of me. What were all those years of training for then?) I had ordered him to come with me.

It would seem suspicious if I entered without adult supervision now, hey?

The instant a foot stepped inside the school, two hawks (jokes! They were actually students) descended upon us.

'Do you wish to transfer to Nanimori? We have the best facilities here and...' They chattered on, dragging us along on an unwilling tour. I already had the map from Teacher Two's hacking. She really didn't need to hack, but I guess she enjoyed it.

The butler/driver tensed but relaxed after they did nothing but chatter and drag with fixed smiles on their faces.

I must make a note of that for complaint. Those fixed smiles made me want to punch them off.

'And these are the bathrooms...' They pointed while pointing to the bubblers. I yawned and looked at the bubblers, bored. So bubblers were the new toilet huh? She turned around and pointed the complete opposite direction. 'Oops! I meant these were the bathrooms!'

I nodded and the dragged me off somewhere else. After another seven minutes of chatter, they abandoned me next to a stall and departed to swoop on the next poor potential student.

Since I was already next to the stall, I ordered a stick of fairy floss.

'Do you want one?'

'No, Brighteye-sama.'

'Brighteye-sama is suspicious in a place like this. Call me Miss. I'm used to it.'

'Yes, Miss.'

'Good. What's your name?'

'Grey.' I nearly chuckled at the irony. Grey.

'Well, Grey. Pretend to be my guardian in this place. It wouldn't do to seem to have a kid ordering an adult around now, would it?'

'No, Miss.' He said with a deep bow. I rolled my eyes and turned around for my fairy floss. I was about to pay when a hand reached and paid for me. 'I am your temporary guardian now, so I pay.'

'Good. You're catching on well. I'll pay you back later.'

'Thank you.'

We moved on, stopping by everywhere. I didn't spot Tsuna anywhere though, or other familiar faces from the manga.

Did I have to truly attend the school to meet him?

I guess so. I walked around the school once more and left, giving in my slip that allowed me to transfer into the school Teacher Two and Liza had prepared earlier.

Then I left for the hotel again, sighing as I tried to think of a way to escape the power hungry fools that swarmed the place.

* * *

I looked over the back seat in the car. The Pink Panther theme was ringing in my ears.

'I think... They're still gathered around the penthouse elevator, Grey. What should I _doooooo_?' I whispered loudly to Grey. He looked enough like a grandpa for me to trust him. Plus the fact he came from Liza.

'I shall go in first. Dash in when there's a chance, Miss.'

'Huh?' He slid smoothly out of his seat and walked into the hotel. The people crowding the elevator turned to look around, and I swear to Heaven, their eyes_ gleamed._

'Ohoho! Alice-chan's butler! Welcome...'

'Brighteye's butler? Can you give her this?'

'Oh, you are a looker!' I felt sick. Grey look at least _sixty_. 'Please give this to Brighteye?' I gulped. Grey was my _butler_ and he was being sucked up to. And being looked upon like he was a hunk of juicy meat thrown into a den of wolves.

What would they have done if it was me? I shuddered.

_Rich people are scary... Discounting the fact I was rich, of course._

I realised that Grey had been methodically walking away from the elevator, and the people were following. I whipped the door open, ran through the doors and pressed the elevator button. The door opened, and I slipped in.

_Where's my friggin card? Pocket, aha!_

'Oh! There's Alice!'

'Where?' The simultaneously looked around and saw me fumbling to get the card into the stupidly small slot.

'ALICE!' They thundered across the floor. I pushed the "close door" button so fast I nearly jammed it into the wall. I glanced up and blanched when I realised that they had reached the half-way mark.

...How do they run in stiletto heels anyway? It should slow them down at least! I looked at the door which seemed to be closing with the speed of the slowest snail on Earth.

_Oh gosh, please don't let me be caught, please don't let me be caught!_

The door closed with the closest ones a meter away. Only_ one._ _And_she was wearing heels. She should apply for the Olympics. I bet she could out run any of those buff men if they ever compete in heels.

I collapsed on the wall of the elevator and gulped for air after the maddest run I had ever done in my two lives. I would never wish for myself to be famous ever again.

_I hope Grey's all right... I mean, they did look a bit murderous when they missed me._

_..._

_I __**think **__they won't murder him... And he's smart enough to escape..._

And with that comforting thought, I stepped into the suite and wandered off to find the bed.

The suite was quite big, containing a stocked kitchen, a living room, bedroom, bathroom and toilet, washing machine, and balcony. It was like an apartment, only not and fancier. I sighed and flopped onto the soft bed.

It was quite lonely, with only one person in this whole huge suite. It was these times that made me miss my family the most. The home that was just big enough for us to live in, me and my brother arguing on how he left his stuff on _my_ side of the room, mom singing downstairs in the kitchen and Grandmama stroking the cat. Dad would probably be out in the garden weeding while making sure Emily was safe on the picnic blanket...

I fell asleep listening to phantom laughter and singing, and my brother's breathing as he struggled through his maths homework.

**

* * *

I walked up to the Nanimori School in the uniform, not wearing my contacts (since it would be troublesome if the receptionist forgot about me straight away) and just enjoying the view.**

Tsuna was fourteen years old when he was first year, at Nanimori Middle. So the years before that were spent at this school huh... I stared at the entrance. It was a small, but very well-off looking. I stepped in and went to the front office, fiddling with my bag and timetable (which had been sent to my room earlier on by an overly sweet manager).

'Um... Excuse me?' The office lady swivelled in her chair to face me and blinked in surprise at my eyes. Then she put on a smile and raised a questioning eyebrow. 'Can I please register?'

'Are you one of the new transfer students?'

'Yes.'

'Name?'

'Alice Bright.' They had enrolled me with a fake last name. Said it would be harder (though not _much _harder) for those horrendous rich people to track me.

I swear they were stalking me! I couldn't leave my apartment for four days straight because of them!

'There, done. Have you got your timetable?' I nodded, holding it to her so she could see. 'Then you can go to your first class now... Which is Mathematics? Do you want a guide?'

'No, it's fine.' I bowed a little and left, following the map that I had. Turn a left, a right, go up the stairs and pass three doors. Check if room is classroom 1A. Knock on door.

The door opened.

'Alice Bright? Transfer student?' A teacher with beady eyes looked at me disapprovingly.

'Yes.'

'You're late.' I mentally groaned. If only I didn't forget that there were people trying to mob me when I got down, I would've come earlier. I _had _forgotten though, and had to escape through the parking lot.

Stupid idiotic rich people.

But I couldn't say that to him.

'Sorry. I will not make this a habit.'

'Of course. Welcome to Nanimori by the way. The class hasn't officially started yet, so please stand outside until you hear my call, clear?'

'Yes.' He nodded once at me and closed the door again. I leaned on the wall next to the door, waiting for my call to go in. I wonder how I could approach Tsuna. When I had told Liza that the series that I had read had started when Tsuna was fourteen, she just shrugged.

'_That happens often enough.'_

'_But there's a whole year! And I can't approach him because he's the loser of the grade! He's supposed to be saved by Reborn, and then get friends by Reborn's influence and that's how he becomes affiliated with the Mafia! And his friends made because of Reborn makes him accept his fate! I can't just _approach_ him and become his friend because of that!'_

'_You have a year. Use it wisely. Use the year for making friends with the normal students, helping out Tsunayoshi once in a while in a discreet way, extend your contact list, learning about Tsunayoshi's character. He is a real person; the series wouldn't have covered everything about him. Observe him quietly, and when the time comes when you have to protect him, protect him. When the series starts and everything gets hectic, join his family.'_

'_But I thought we were our own family.'_

'_Unofficial one, yes. My good friend May, Number 24, joined another family. She still of course, is very close to us, but it's ok. Just join his family.'_

'_Ok then…'_

I gulped as I heard the teacher introduce me to the class as a return foreign transfer student from England. Bright was English, so it made sense that they forged the papers to look like I came from England. I faced the door, getting ready to go in when the teacher asked. I was nervous. What would Tsuna look like in real life? How would I help him and not help him at the same time?

'You may come in now!' The teacher called. I was opening the door and stepping in when I got shoved forward, a person landing on top of me.

'Ow, ow, ow, ow… I'm sorry I'm late sensei!' the person on top of me groaned out. 'Wait, why am I on something soft?' I turned my head and glared at him… to see very fluffy brown hair.

_What?_

Tsuna visibly flinched at my glare and drew back, waving his hands wildly.

'Hiiiiiiiiie, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! I'll… I'll help you pick up your books right away!' He rambled, noticing the fall had scattered all my books from my bag. I just kept on staring, shocked. Who knew I would meet him this soon?

His eyes shifted from my stare (maybe he thought I was still glaring at him) nervously to his work at hand. He hurriedly picked up all of my books and shoved them in my arms. Then he speed-walked to, what I presumed, was his seat, his face flushing and his shoulders hunched from the laughs that came from the class.

'No-good Tsuna again!'

'Landing on the cute transfer student? Dream on!' I stood up with my books in my arms, and glared at the class. I admit, my glare was pretty awesome. And the only time my eyes came in handy. Also the only time I look cool. But it scares people away, and _that's_ no good.

And did he just say cute…? I pictured myself as I put my books in my bag with precise movements. Sure, I didn't have freckles, wasn't atrociously fat, didn't have skin problems, etc. Maybe that classified as cute for this world. Compared to my family however… I was as plain as a duck in a flock of peacocks.

The teacher had his eyebrows raised, but coughed and moved on, letting Tsuna go this once. Tsuna, in one of the middle row seats visibly wilted with relief, his chin hitting the table.

'Bright-san, would you like to shortly introduce yourself?'

Oh, Japanese school thing. I nodded and stepped forward, my stance full of confidence. _First impressions are important. Don't look like a pushover _I said to myself. Those five years of training had given me muscles, and made my figure fill out more. Thirteen was pre-teen years, puberty, that type of stuff.

I hate puberty.

'My name is Alice Bright. Transfer student from England. I like computers, and cloud-watching. I dislike…' I paused, couldn't think of anything that I disliked until something perfect popped into my mind, 'fan-boys.' I ended with a hateful glare, imagining those rich people back at the hotel.

Yup, I hated fan-boys. And every other person who wanted to suck up to me.

'Ok, that's enough. There is an empty seat at the back, you may sit there.' The teacher said as he clapped his hands. I bowed slightly to the teacher and strode down the aisle, looking at Tsuna on the way. He shrank back and looked steadfastly at his table. I frowned as I sat.

Was I really that scary? Sure, the colour of my eyes made my gaze unnecessarily sharp, but I wasn't a bad person! I was easy to approach as well, I think. After five years of being locked in a huge house with weirdoes for company, many might differ though.

The class was boring. I had learnt it all with Spartan Teacher Number Three nearly three years ago. I looked out the window and yawned. The teacher saw this action, and a vein throbbed in his temple.

'Bright-san, am I boring you?' I looked at him. I didn't want to get into trouble on the first day. I stood up.

'No, sensei.'

'Then of course you were listening.'

'Yes, sensei.'

'Then please answer question six.' I looked at question six and calculated in my brain.

'Seventeen over thirty-two.' I said with a perfect bland polite voice. The teacher looked at the question and was slightly surprised when he saw I had gotten it correct.

'You may sit down now, Bright-san.'

'Thank you, sensei.' I sat down and looked out the window again. This was like before the accident, where I had been going to school. The only difference was that back then I was struggling with the concepts. Now it was all just revision.

Boy, if I had known what would've cropped up from my behaviour, I would've acted friendlier. It's scary how news travels fast.

**

* * *

**

'I heard she is this total hot chick who's got an attitude man! And smart too!'

'I heard that she was a delinquent, and the glare that she gives could turn you into a block of ice!'

'You're all wrong! _I_ heard that her bright yellow eyes can see into your soul and get your darkest deepest secrets, and her bad-girl attitude would show up and she'll _extort you!_ And anyway, her she's not hot, she looks like a _demon.'_

All these rumours before it even reached fourth period. I had been walking calmly into the canteen area, since I had forgotten my fork. And then I heard these rumours and I died a little inside.

What? A delinquent? Bad-girl attitude? Hot chick? _Extortionist? _Who were those guys? I was just me, normal Alice. Though it seems like I wasn't that normal now. Unfortunately.

I rounded the corner with a bad mood, my eyes narrowed slightly in thought.

How could I get rid of this image? I looked around when I realised that the whole area had fallen silent, and everyone was staring at me. I looked at everyone there and they hurriedly returned to whatever they had been doing before. I looked on disgustedly. I was _already_ feared? How can I prove them wrong? If I was feared, I would never be able to approach Tsuna!

I walked forward, my forehead in a frown from thinking until I caught my reflection. I stared at it, my bright yellow eyes boring holes into the glass.

I looked normal. I just had a frown on my face. What's so scary about that? Just because my face was pointy and my eyes were a bright colour, does _not_ mean that when a person frowns it makes them scary. Just what was their problem? I tried to knead the frown off my face but gave up when it was a doomed failure.

This was too much. I was ready to rip out my hair and _scream_. I had been getting ready for a normal life!

I stalked towards the area where they gave out free plastic forks and took one. Everyone cleared the way for me when I walked out and around the corner. Then suddenly the room burst into life again. I paused to listen.

'She _is_ cute!'

'Her glare was so electrifying! I felt shivers in my spine!' I scoffed. I wasn't even _glaring_. How can they mistake a frown for a glare?

'That walk! That talk! She's definitely a delinquent! Or a former Yankee at least!' I scoffed again. I didn't even _say_ anythingand they classed me as a delinquent?

'Let's make a fan-club! Senpai is so cool!' I jolted in horror. _What?_

'She hates fan-boys. So let's just…' I relaxed. Phew. At least they weren't going to make one. '...make a secret fan-club!'

'YEAH!' I groaned and nearly bashed my head in the wall.

And that is how I learnt that first impressions are _really _important.

As in _really, REALLY _important.

* * *

**Alice... you should try smiling. XD And their first meeting didn't go well did it? *evil cackle* _ **

**I hope you all review! Pleeeeeaaaase? So that I can know all of your opinions? The humour here is understated, so... for all those people who enjoy totally hilarious random actions, wrong place. Sorry. TT_TT Though still, p****oor Alice... though she did meet Tsuna! ^^**


	4. She cleaned the gym

**Someone told me that Nanimori was spelt as Namimori (though Nanimori looks better to me) so I have changed it. ^^ Thank you, microwaffle! Hehe, sorry for the mistake. *bows apologetically***

**Thank you for all your reviews! TT_TT It's over thirty already and I was like O_o. I love all of you! And also thanks to my sister, for beta-ing. She rules, ya know? **

**And stopping my rambling to let you read... (assuming people read this, that is), please enjoy! (and review? *puppy eyes*)**

**

* * *

**

'Now we are doing our every quarter year test! First is the vaulting horse! Please line up everybody!' Our Teacher, Mr Fukawa, yelled out to us. The class groaned as they slowly moved into a line.

My first PE lesson… was a test. Joy.

'Asawa Haruko!'

'Yes!' A nice looking girl looked at the third level of the vaulting horse and started running, landing perfectly. The Teacher scribbled something on that clipboard of his and looked up.

'Bright Alice!'

'Yes…' I mumbled out, and walked towards the mat. I yawned and stared at the vault. Then I started a light jog and vaulted over, giving a perfect landing anyway. Then I stumbled a bit, cursing.

I hate PE.

Today was not a good day. I was already in a bad mood from these random boys hanging around my desk in an _inconspicuous _way. Glaring at them had also made _more_ rumours, which made even _more_ rumours which spawned even _more_ rumours until there were so many rumours about me floating around that I had given up keeping track of them all.

No, scratch the PE. I hate school in general.

The Teacher scribbled something on his board and yelled the next name. The people who passed were put on the end of the line so that we could attempt one level higher. The people who failed were given one more chance and sent to the other side to watch.

I watched with shrewd eyes at everyone until the name I had been waiting for was called.

'Sawada Tsunayoshi!'

'Y-yes!' Tsuna stumbled forward, his face an "I'm going to fail anyway" expression. His fluffy brown hair still stuck up as always as he started running awkwardly towards the vault, him pausing in front of it and then stumbling on it, knocking the three boxes over. I frowned.

Technically, he would have been able to vault over it. But he hesitated…

'Haha, no-good Tsuna as always!' Someone yelled as Tsuna rubbed his head in an "I knew it..." Type of expression.

'I'm surprised he didn't skip!' Some boys laughed at him. He sighed and slumped.

'Failing on the third level? I thought so…' some girls muttered. I glared. This blatant verbal abuse! I looked at the Teacher, and I was enraged that he had this bored expression on his face. I kept my face calm.

I can't do anything yet. I have to wait.

'Again, Sawada? This is your third testing you know. Do you want to try a second time?' He shook his head wildly. 'Then, Sareno Makina!' A pretty athletic girl raised her hand and grinned. The boys immediately stared at her (obviously very popular). Then she vaulted over the vault perfectly, giving Tsuna an even worse impression.

I shook my head in sympathy. He had the worst luck, hadn't he?

The vault level was increased every time everyone in the class had vaulted over it. The ones that had passed anyway. I failed on the ninth level though. As I walked to the sidelines to watch, a voice stuttered a greeting to me.

'G-g-good work, Bright-san.' I looked up surprised. Someone talked to me? I looked up to see a girl with glasses and braids, giving her the classic nerdy look that was becoming oh-so-fashionable in teenage-dom back in the time before I died. She looked nervous, fidgeting slightly on the spot.

Karuya Setsuna. Grades were one of the best, expected to go one of those super smart prestigious middle schools. From behaviour at class, she was shy, but liked to make friends. She was a "middler". Not high on the social stats like Sareno Makina but not as low as Tsuna. Normal. Just how I like it.

I smiled at her.

'You too.' She looked surprised at my smile and smiled shyly.

'Do you like sports?' She asked as I walked towards her and leaned on the wall, my hands in my pockets. 'You look like you do a sport.' I stared at her blankly and she backed away a little. I blinked.

'Sorry. I forgot staring at people makes them scared.' I said offhandedly. She looked at me incredulously.

'You… you weren't glaring at me?' This time I looked incredulously at her.

'I was just staring. I do that when I'm bored.' She blinked owlishly behind her glasses and suddenly laughed.

'So that's your default expression?'

'Yeah. And by the way, I don't do a sport.' She was still giggling, as if she just made a startling revelation. She straightened out and looked at me. 'I'm only good at dodging.' I added.

It was true. I was only good at dodging because of those freaking meat cleavers Jack threw at me. My reflexes were good. That was all. And oh, my leg strength was good too, from all that training I got while running away from said meat cleavers. Nothing more.

She smiled. 'You're only good at dodging?' she said teasingly.

'Yup. Not a useful skill, but I'm good at dodging.' I nodded mock-wisely. 'It is particularly useful when you need to dodge fan-boys that lunge at you in hallways.' She laughed and stood a little closer.

She wasn't leaning on the wall. She didn't seem the type anyway.

'You're not as scary as I thought, Bright-san.'

'Don't call me by my last name. I don't like it.' I said with a scowl. She looked at my expression, tensed a bit and seemed to force herself to relax.

'You shouldn't do that expression you know. It makes people not want to approach you.' She said chidingly, though still a bit tense. Maybe she was afraid of my reaction.

'Oh. Then I should stop doing it then.' I changed my scowl into a forced smile. 'Better?' She looked at me and laughed.

'You look like you're constipated… Alice-san?' I smiled at her.

'Better. Can I call you Setsuna-san?' She smiled blindingly. I blinked. She was actually pretty cute herself.

'Of course!' I smiled back at her and laughed. All the people in the waiting section for the freakishly super athletic people to go through the level twelve vaults stared.

'Did she just…'

'Yes. Bright-san _laughed_.' Mutters and whispered immediately pervaded the room. I rolled my eyes and scowled.

'I hate those people who're making rumours. I didn't even do half of them!' I grumbled. Setsuna giggled slightly and pointed out that I was scowling again. I groaned and was trying to change it when I was interrupted by the Teacher.

'We'll do the flexibility tests next lesson. But we have some time left so what game do you want to play? Two options. Dodge ball or warm-ups. Choose.' Majority went to dodge-ball. Obviously. And I said majority because one person had voted for warm-ups.

Tsuna.

I didn't blame him though. With his bad luck… he would probably die in a few seconds. Or get ten balls to the face. Or something as bad as that.

The Teacher walked around, giving us ones and twos and we grouped up.

To my disappointment, I wasn't in Setsuna's group. Though interestingly, as I surveyed my team, I saw a very scared Tsuna in the corner fidgeting. My whole team groaned.

'With Tsuna we'll never win!'

'Yeah, the team with Tsuna always loses...' I frowned again. All of them just kept on muttering about how Tsuna was a failure. No wonder he had a low self-esteem! But Teacher blew the whistle and the game started giving each team having two balls each, effectively cutting off any more complaints about Tsuna. The balls soon started flying around surprisingly fast.

Nothing compared to knives though.

I stepped to the left as a ball whizzed by and hit the legs of the person behind me. I heard the person sigh and head off to the sidelines. The ball bounced back and a random classmate took it and threw it.

This continued for a time. Just keeping to myself and dodging the random balls that passed my way.

Until I realised I was the only one left on the middle of the court. Then Fukawa-sensei (that is what I should call him now, yes?) blew the whistle and stepped forward.

'How many people on Team 2?'

'Two!' Someone called out.

'How many people on Team 1?'

'…' I didn't answer. Then someone called out

'Two!' I looked around curiously, trying to find my teammate. I found no-one. The Teacher raised an eyebrow.

'Who's the second one?' Everyone pointed to Tsuna. I looked at him. He had been standing at the side blending in perfectly with the crowd. I guess his plan of "blending in until the game had ended" failed.

He had that expression again. That blank eyed, open-mouthed, I-can't-believe-this look.

'Sawada, go into the middle of the court and at least try to look like you're playing.'

'Y-yes sensei!' Students laughed at the Teacher's comment (I was glad to see Setsuna wasn't laughing) and Tsuna walked/stumbled towards me. When I looked at him, he tripped flat onto his face in... fear?

I mentally groaned in my brain. He must've heard the rumours as well.

'Rules are the last team with the most numbers wins! Begin!'

'Ah, then we'll lose then! Bright-san might be good but Tsuna can't play dodge-ball for his life!' A vein ticked in my forehead.

We'll lose huh… Let's see about that.

The first ball came, aimed for Tsuna. I shoved him to the side, jumping over the ball myself. Then pushed his head down as another ball came from behind his head, using his head as leverage to land behind him. I pulled him towards me as another two balls came from the side-lines, missing us completely.

I caught a ball that came from behind me and threw it at one of the two in the other team. It missed, unfortunately.

I had never been good at aiming…

This continued for awhile. Me shoving Tsuna and the people on the sidelines throwing the balls. Some boys were snapping pictures suspiciously in my direction.

...

At least now I knew who the fan-boys were. I glared at them and shoved Tsuna out of the trajectory of another two balls at the same time.

The wonders of multi-tasking.

We were doing pretty fine; even I would say that. That was until Tsuna tripped over his own feet, sprawling on the floor. He got up slowly. My eyes flickered to him and the people in the other class took advantage of it and...

'THWACK!' Tsuna got a ball in the face. I winced in sympathy.

*_BEEEEEEEEP* _The whistle blew and the Teacher gave his "wonderful" proclamation.

'Team 2 wins!' The people on my team groaned.

'And I thought that maybe this time the team with No-good Tsuna will actually _win_.'

'Yeah, No-good Tsuna's fault.' A girl agreed. I grumbled. I was trying to help _discreetly_. Made it worse instead.

Looking at Tsuna who was still on the floor, I reached out a hand. He stopped rubbing his head and stared at the hand.

'Help.' I stated simply, my face back into its bored expression (didn't want to force a smile and looked constipated).

He flinched at my face (mental note to myself, try and look friendlier) but took the hand anyway. I hoisted him up, made sure he wasn't going to fall again and turned around, ready to walk off. I was thirsty, see.

And the _sight_ that met my eyes.

Nearly all of the boys in the class were on their butts or faces in a falling position.

'Bright-san! I fell over, please help me up!'

'Bright-san! I think I had gotten a ball to my face as well! I need help to go to sick-bay!'

'I think my ankle twisted, Bright-san... Help me up!' Another boy moaned out.

My eyebrow twitched. I stalked right through them, not helping anybody or even glancing at them.

'You're all annoying,' I told them, and went out of the gym to the bubblers.

Annoying fan-boys...

After my drink, I went and changed, Setsuna chattering about some homework or another. I nodded, enjoying non-fan-boy company. She was nice too, offering a study session together later in the week. I agreed and we went out of the change rooms together, her babbling happily and me just nodding.

I looked around in the crowd outside the change rooms.

'Where's Tsuna?' I asked Setsuna.

'I don't know. The losing team usually needs to clean up afterwards, but they look like they're mostly here...' She trailed off looking doubtful. I frowned and walked off towards the gym.

'Thank you for your invitation Setsuna-san. I will make sure to go afterwards. Meanwhile, good bye.' She nodded confusedly, as I walked away. PE was the last period for the day, and if Tsuna had to clean the whole gym...

I peeked into the gym to see Tsuna dozing in a corner in the sunshine. I smiled at the sight, and stared at the messy gym.

No wonder he wanted to sleep, what did kids _do _in here? There was dirt everywhere!

I sighed and started with the vaulting horse we had just used, packing it up into the storeroom. Then I swept the floor and packed random PE objects back to their original positions.

As I sneezed because of some dust on some random baseball gloves, I asked myself exactly _why_ I was doing this.

Then I looked at Tsuna and reasoned it was good exercise. And with him sleeping that way, his hair lit up like that...

He kind of reminded me of Jack. Not as in Spartan Teacher 1, but Jack, as in my little brother. The thought made me nearly tear up, but I glared at the gloves instead and continued packing up, wishing it won't make me sneeze too much.

After all, I wouldn't want to wake Tsuna. And he was kind of in this predicament because of me anyway (well... indirectly), and didn't Liza say to help discreetly? Doing this made me feel useful, somehow.

I packed the last of the mats into the corner and looked at the corner where Tsuna was sleeping in. He was in a different position (was he awake? Nah, if he was awake he would've screamed at the sight of me or something.)

Frowning in disapproval, I ran up to the boy's change room (peering in first, of course) and took the only bag left. Then I ran back down and put the bag next to Tsuna, his jacket over him. I nodded in approval.

Looking in this angle, I really could imagine him as my little brother... I crouched down and stared at him in the face. Then I left, thinking Grey would be worried or something and so I walked out, bag slung over my shoulder.

Right after I left, there was a tiny muffled "_Oomph!"_ as if someone had tripped over but when I peered back in, only Tsuna was there, sleeping again. I shrugged and left for real, walking out of the school.

It was only later I realised that the jacket over Tsuna was placed in a different direction that I had originally placed it. But I just shrugged it off, thinking my memory was weird again.

The next day, Tsuna didn't run away from me.

Though he still flinched when I stared at him, at least he didn't immediately fall from his chair.

I mentally shrugged as I sat down. At least it was an improvement... right?

* * *

'Class, we have our annual camp coming up! I know it's a month away, but some people,' she looked pointedly at Tsuna, who shrank into his seat, 'always put payment in late, so here it is! Please remember to pay by next month! It's your last year at Namimori, and there's only three months of school left until you go to Middle school, so enjoy this little trip!'

Everyone started chattering excitedly as I yawned. Setsuna came up to me.

It had already been... a week? But Setsuna had become my friend. Only friend. Her other friends were a bit...air-headed. And others were a bit too obsessed with guys, that type of thing. Though I don't wonder about that, it seemed like _every_ girl in this class was like that.

I'm not talking or complaining or whatever... But sometimes I just want to ask them 'Isn't thirteen a bit young to have those thoughts?' But I never do.

Not bothered. Let them think what they want.

'Alice-chan! Want to bunk together?' I smiled up at her. The guys in the class immediately swivelled around and '_aaahed'_ in this... totally disgusting and creepy way. I immediately scowled.

'Yes.'

'I heard we'll be going as a joint trip with the other elementary!' I nodded.

'Wonderful.'

'Yup!' She continued babbling, and I kept my usual role and nodded.

I guess Grey could take care of the guardian's signature and whatnot. I yawned and nodded a yes to Setsuna's question about bringing sunscreen.

School passed normally (which was a rarity these days). I kept an eye on Tsuna, noting his tiny little habits and such (seriously, I felt like a stalker...), listened to Setsuna, and handed in homework. I stared out the window in thought.

School trip huh?

A _normal _school trip? I briefly perked up until I realised what world I was in.

_Impossible... I don't believe in normal anymore, seriously._

_..._

_Though I do hope that it would at least be remotely normal..._

* * *

Sunlight pierced through the curtains to my eyes when Grey opened them up for me. I mentally squirmed at the light.

I hate mornings.

'Wake up, Miss. Breakfast is ready.'

'Mmmrpgh.'

'If you don't wake up now, you might be late for school.' He added gently. I groaned as I levered myself up and rubbed my eyes.

'I hate Mondays.' Grey chuckled gently as he wheeled the breakfast tray in. This was practically routine already. One month into my first year with Tsuna (even though I had started school in the last quarter in the school year, so it technically wasn't a year…).

Though it wasn't going well, to say the least.

I stared blearily at my breakfast. Eggs and bacon, toast and a cup of soy milk (since I hated milk). Pretty simple, just as I liked it. I picked up a fork and stabbed at the egg.

School was not exactly horrible... I mean, I wasn't being bullied or looked down upon, or anything like that. It was just annoying when a random guy came along and fidgeted next to my seat in a way I knew all too well (hey, I was Amanda's letter bearer for years, give me some credit) until I glared at him, which would then make the guy meep and run away.

Of course, that doesn't _stop_ them from coming. Oh no, it couldn't be that simple. They had pinned me for the "tough cute" type (though the cute part was mainly due to the coercion of my eyes. I swear to Heaven, I have never been "cute").

_Tsuna_ however... Well, he keeps avoiding me (for some odd reason or another. It was fine after the PE lesson... the he suddenly just kind of started avoiding me again. I think it had to do with _that_ incident).

I could even imagine those purple lines covering half of his face in that weird pose he does on one leg when he's surprised.

How was I supposed to help him then? I didn't even feel particularly scary!

...At least I had become good friends with Setsuna.

Though not the rest of the other girls though (as mentioned before). Those people reminded me too much of Amanda's female stalkers in my previous life. Just the thought of spending my _second_ life with them makes me want to barf.

I picked up my toast and munched into it. Grey fussed around in the big room, arranging my school uniform and cleaning up stuff. Grey was my constant companion. I loved him for that.

I finished demolishing my breakfast and stood up, where he immediately gave me my school uniform. I took it and started to change slowly, still groggy from the morning. I didn't like it when other people tried to dress me, so Grey let me do it for myself. Of course, his perfectionist nature wouldn't allow for my collar being slightly lopsided or anything, so I would've been fussed over anyway.

'Grey, drive today?'

'Of course, Miss.' I yawned.

'Thank you…' I yawned out as I stumbled out to the corridor. Go toilet, come out, end of the hallway, put on shoes and go to the elevator, wait for Grey, press a single digit number, go out on that floor and slide down the fire escape to the parking lot.

Much simpler than being swarmed.

I slid into the seat and Grey closed the door for me. Then he slid into his own driver's seat (we didn't trust any of the real drivers) and started the engine, pulling out of our spot and down the driveway. I stared out of the window, bored out of my brain.

'Miss?' Grey asked from the front.

'Yes?'

'I heard that there was a school camp coming up.' I blinked. Oh, that.

'How did you know?' I could practically see his smile.

'What type of butler would I be if I didn't know my employer's affairs?' I nodded. True. 'I have already signed it for you and put it into your bag. The payment is also there.'

'Thank you, Grey.'

'My pleasure, Miss.' I nodded sleepily and stared out of the window again, and my reflection.

I personally didn't like looking at my reflection. My own eyes creeped me out too much. They seemed to see through me, and I didn't like that one little bit. They (as in Liza and them) said that it was a family trait, since we had to intimidate sometimes to get information. Just that some colours are more intimidating than others.

Yellow, for example, was more intimidating than pink.

The streets passed by in a blur as I thought. I wonder if that was what other people felt when I looked at them. Maybe that's why Tsuna always ran away.

Wasn't he always chased by his un-usefulness before he met Reborn?

Grey turned a smooth corner. The houses blurred and straightened out again.

You know, I was truly tempted to befriend Tsuna. But that was Reborn's job, so I was looking forward to Reborn coming. But there was a problem when he actually came. Reborn, from our information files, was not one to be easily trifled with.

How do I join Tsuna's family? I remembered every fight Tsuna and the Guardians had (it _was_ the highlight of the whole series) but I couldn't for my life remember what had happened before Rokudo Mukuro came into the picture.

I screwed up my forehead in thought. When Reborn came up, he had been looking for…

'Miss, please get out now.' I smiled up at Grey and got out, dusting my skirt and checking if anything was out of order.

'Grey, wait for me here when it's after school?'

'Of course.' I grinned at him and started walking. 'Are you certain you don't want me to walk you to school, Miss?' I froze. I unfroze myself and twisted the corners of my mouth up looking at Grey.

'No! You _definitely_ don't need to come to school with me. Hahahaha!' I laughed nervously as I speed-walked away. The last time Grey followed me to school… I shudder just thinking about it.

Let's just say it involved many towels and oranges and leave it at that.

'Then I shall be here waiting when you finish school.'

'Thank you!' He just bowed in response and stepped into the car. I hummed happily as I walked down the street like a _normal_ student. I breathed in and smiled. Normality. I've been missing this.

No more random knives flying at me! No more sitting position without a chair when I was concentrating on typing fast! No more hard maths!

Yup, just like a normal student. I nodded. How could I ever hated being normal?

...Though knowing this world, this sparse moment of normality wouldn't last.

I reached the school and walked into the courtyard in front. Entering the school, I went to Setsuna. We greeted each other and started walking towards the classroom, her chattering about some new science topic or another while I listened. We reached our classroom just as the bell rang and we dispersed into our individual seats. I sat at the back of the room near the window, so I could practically see the whole class without moving my head much. I watched Tsuna as he put his bag down but stopped when the Teacher came in.

Get up, say greeting, bow and sit down to start lesson.

It was third period before anything interesting happened.

'Does anyone have notes to hand in?' I got up and gave in my camp note, as well as the payment. The Teacher nodded and marked something off on her ever present clipboard.

'The grade camp trip is next week, so Asawa Haruko and Sawada Tsunayoshi, please hand in your notes before Friday.'

'Yes!' Asawa said. Tsuna wasn't as confident.

'Y-yes...'

I shook my head. Not looking forward to the school trip. Who knows what could pop up?

At least I was bunking with Setsuna. That should make it better... right?

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**School trip next time! ^^ I hope I continue getting lovely reviews from you all... =^= You guys are the best!**

**Shall see you all next week... hopefully. Haha!**


	5. And went to camp

**Life. That is all I have to say about my late update to Tuesday. ^^ Please enjoy?**

**Thank you reviewers! (And favouriters... and story-alerters). My sister for beta-ing and my good old friend RGNN for encouragement! This chapter is kind of short compared to the others, but I'll try to make up for it next chapter because... THE HOLIDAYS ARE COMING! *counting down the days***

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Grey was fussing over me (as usual. He was _such_ a mom).

'School regulations say I can't follow you, so be careful! I've packed everything I think you will need into your bags, with plenty of the sweet snacks you asked for in your backpack for your bus trips. Remember, sunscreen is in the side pocket of your backpack. Raincoats are in your luggage case in the pockets in the inside of the lid...'

I yawned. Why did we have to start off so early? Five o'clock in the morning. It was four thirty right now.

I hate mornings. They should let us sleep in late for this type of occasion.

'Grey... it's fine. I can take care of myself, I think. It's just a week.' Grey nodded.

'True. I will get ready for your return then.'

'Have a holiday. Go back and tell Liza about what had happened, etc, etc.' I said while shaking my head to try and clear the haze clouding my sleep deprived brain.

'Very well then. I shall order tickets back to Italy now.' I nodded and yawned again.

Apparently, Setsuna's words were true. This _was_ a joint trip with the other elementary school so that they can have their students participate in activities in a "supportive, friendly environment to allow the students to know each other and prepare for middle school". Setsuna had privately told me it was more for the teachers to compare their students in a competitive" environment.

Huh. An _obsessively_ competitive environment.

'Miss, I will drive you to school today.' I thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. It was early (Grey was worried I would be _late_. Impossible!), and I couldn't be bothered to walk so early in the morning.

I couldn't be bothered to do anything in the morning, actually.

'Let's go then, Grey. We might as well arrive early, since I'm awake now.' I said grumpily. Grey just smiled (he was used to my grumpiness in mornings) and just nodded and led me outside by the proper elevator.

I mean, what rich guy would stand outside the elevator at four thirty? I stepped into the foyer and properly left the hotel for the first time, stepping into the car and Grey drove to school. Nothing interesting happened as the car went to the front of the school and Grey dropped me off.

'Here, Miss.' He opened the door for me.

'Thank you, Grey.' I nodded at him and stepped out. I dusted off my skirt and looked up, to say some last words to Grey but stared instead, into the gaping face of Setsuna.

Oops. I forgot that she was early to everything.

'Alice... is that a Rolls Royce I'm seeing you get out of?' She said in awe. I fidgeted uncomfortably.

'Yeah.'

'Is that a _butler_ I see calling you Miss?'

'Yeeeeees...' I said, trailing off uncomfortably. Grey just smiled serenely at her, and went back into the car, driving off. I looked at the car turning the corner.

Traitor. Leave me to fend off awkward questions by myself, why don't you Grey? Setsuna looked at me with wide eyes.

'I never knew you were rich, Alice-chan! You said you were well-off, but I didn't think _this _well off!' I kept on fidgeting.

'Didn't want to say. More rumours.' I said simply. She nodded in understanding.

'Ah, so that's why. But why are you attending a little school like this?' She waved around wildly, indicating the small school.

'I like it. And besides, there is another person as rich as me attending this school.' She looked at me with wide eyes.

'Really? Who?' I smirked at her.

'Not telling.' Tsuna, technically, is as rich as me. Hah, I could imagine the look on her face if I said that. But to do so would be bad to the future storyline so...

'Tell me, Alice-chan! Who?' She kept asking. I just shook my head and smiled. She stopped after awhile (I knew she would just pester me later) and grinned. 'Well, we have a few minutes to kill, want to talk?' I nodded.

'Sure.' Then we just sat down next to the gate, talking. Setsuna mostly talked about how she couldn't believe I was _rich_ and kept trying to guess what my house looked like. She didn't even come close.

'Let's say I'll invite you over one day.' I promised her. Her whole face lit up.

'Really? Then I'll invite you over to my apartment too, one day. Maybe next week! Though... our apartment is kind of small...' I smiled at her.

'It's no problem.' She blinked at my smile.

'You should smile more. You look much nicer that way.' I stared blankly at her and she nudged me with her elbow. 'You're giving me that creepy stare again.' I automatically blinked and intoned a 'Sorry' at her.

'But still...' She was going to continue (amazing how she could be so different from Amanda, but I felt as close to her as Amanda, and they were both my best friends. Both Setsuna and Amanda, I mean) when she noticed something in front of us. 'Oh! The first other student besides from us!' I looked up to see another girl.

I breathed out in relief. If I had to be stuck with a fan-boy... I looked at the girl and was surprised she looked vaguely familiar. Then I realised with a start that she was Kurokawa Hana. I blinked in surprise. She went to our school? I didn't see her in the hallways at all in my few months here... Setsuna smiled.

'Hello, I'm the representative for Namimori Elementary! Are you from Namimori North Elementary?' Hana nodded.

'Yes. I was going to meet someone here but it seems like they're late...' I tugged at Setsuna.

'Hey, why are there people from the other elementary here?' She laughed.

'I forgot! You never listen to announcements, do you? Our school is the meeting place for the two schools to go to the camp place together.'

'Oh.' I said in understanding as I turned to Hana.

'I am Bright Alice. My friend next to me is called Karuya Setsuna. Nice to meet you.' I said to her, hand extended. She smiled and extended her hand to shake.

'English, I presume?'

'Yes. Transfer.' She nodded, and Setsuna (on the side) seemed ecstatic that I was actually talking to and greeting a person that wasn't her. And maybe because I had referred to her as "friend".

'My name is Kurokawa Hana, Bright-san.' I nodded and retracted my hand. A shout came from down the street and we all turned to look.

'Hana! I'm sorry I'm late!' A head of orange hair came into view (I had accepted early on that there were weird natural hair-colours, so I wasn't that shocked), jogging towards us. 'I got lost.' She laughed nervously.

Sasagawa Kyoko. She was _way _cuter than the manga/anime had depicted, and she practically _exuded_ a presence that was utterly like an "I'm-pure-and-innocent-and-cute" type of aura. I immediately understood how she could become the school idol and so nodded in approval.

Her personality was good, her looks were good, her marks were good. I approve of Tsuna having a crush on this girl.

She blinked innocently and looked at Setsuna and I. 'Are you two the school representatives of Namimori Elementary?' I was just about to say I wasn't a representative when Setsuna butted in.

'Yes!' She said happily. Hana stepped forward.

'This is Sasagawa Kyoko. Kyoko, this is Karuya Setsuna and Bright Alice.' Kyoko looked at my eyes and blinked, but she still smiled and bowed at the both of us.

'Nice to meet you.' I nodded in approval at her response to my freaky eyes. She didn't freak out!

…I liked her already.

'Nice to meet you too.' We both said simultaneously, bowing at the same time. We blinked at each other and laughed, albeit Setsuna laughing a bit more loudly. Hana and Kyoko grinned at each other.

'What do you think we're going to do?' Setsuna asked, trying to spark up conversation I guess, until we saw two groups of boys walking slowly down the streets towards us, seemingly arguing about something or other. Both Hana and I groaned simultaneously.

'That's Kyoko's fan club…' Hana sighed out.

'That's my stupid fan club…' I grumbled. Hana blinked and looked at me.

'You have a fan club?'

'Yeah.' I replied. She stared at me. I stared at her in response. As we stared at each other (I don't know why, it just seemed appropriate), bits of conversation from the two groups of boys wafted up from down the street. All our ears perked up, except for Kyoko's, who was tilting her head cutely. She was a bit oblivious, wasn't she?

'_Our_ school's Kyoko-chan will be _way_ cuter than anything _your_ school has!'

'Wrong! _Our_ school's Alice-chan is way _cooler_ than anyone in the whole _district_!'

My eyebrow twitched at the conversation. Hana sighed and slapped her forehead. Setsuna laughed at our reactions. Kyoko just smiled while still tilting her head innocently. I swear I saw pink sparkles around her in the background. My eyebrow twitched again at her reaction. She was a bit _too _innocent, if you get my gist. I didn't _dislike_ her, I actually (kind of) liked her. But… really? Pink sparkles?

But of course, she was much better than some people back home… Like, second life home.

'Look! It's Kyoko-chan!'

'Alice-chan~ Look over here!' The two groups said simultaneously, waving enthusiastically. Then they simultaneously stopped and glared at each other.

'So _that's_ your Alice?' They said with a simultaneous raised eyebrow (which was kind of creepy, considering).

'Huh. We expected more of your _Kyoko-chan_.' Electricity sparked between them and I sighed simultaneously with Hana. Then we looked at each other and exchanged wry grins.

I think we will get along very well.

Looking beyond the two groups, I blatantly realised there was a small crowd of students walking behind Kyoko and my fan clubs. Maybe they were blocking the road or something.

I had my customary frown (hey, it was reflex whenever my fan club was here) and Setsuna was laughing (just like usual). Hana was fending off Kyoko's fan club like a shepherd would do to wolves with Kyoko grinning obliviously, her pink sparkles in full shine.

Then the teacher's came, and everyone split into classes for roll call. I looked around and saw Tsuna. I smiled, he wasn't late.

'We will all go onto the buses now, by class. This is a three hour trip! Remember, we encourage you to develop friendships with Namimori North and hope this last camping trip will be in one of your treasured memories in the future!'

We grunted a response and we were all herded onto the buses. I plopped into a random window seat, made sure it was Setsuna next to me and promptly fell asleep.

That's what you were supposed to do in buses, right?

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'Alice-chan, we're here. Wake up.' Setsuna's voice woke me up. I opened my eyes and sat up, yawning all the while.

'That couldn't have been three hours. It was only two minutes!' I mumbled out while getting the cricks out of my neck. Setsuna laughed slightly.

'It's already eight in the morning, Alice-chan! Come on, we need to collect our luggage and get to our cabins!' I glared at her.

'How can you be so energetic in the _morning?_' I asked her, half-coherent, looking incredulously at her. She chuckled.

'Just get off the bus,' she said as she started walking down the aisle. I stood up and followed her down, rubbing my eyes. Standing outside lining up for luggage collection, I looked around. It seemed like we were in the mountains or something, there were a lot of trees. We came along a dirt track, apparently, and beyond the trees I seemed to see glimpses of little wooden cabins.

I walked forward as I lugged my suitcase from the luggage carrier (though I don't remember ever putting it there… Maybe they did it for us) and waited for Setsuna. Fending off fan boys with my glare, Setsuna came after awhile.

'Phew! I couldn't find you for a second there!' I raised an eyebrow. There were guys yelling 'Alice-chan! Look over here!' And she couldn't find me? (Though… so much for a _secret _fan club). She quickly amended. 'I mean, I nearly couldn't reach you from the crowd around you.' I nodded. That seemed more like it.

'Cabin groups are displayed here! Boys left and girls' right! Please group into your cabin groups and seek the teacher next to your names for your cabin keys!' I started walking forward slowly, forging a slow path towards the display boards, lugging Setsuna and my luggage behind me. A path opened for me automatically.

Hey, some of these weirdoes still believed I was an extortionist. (Though… how did _that_ happen?)

'Setsuna, we're in the same cabin.' Setsuna looked over my shoulder and squealed. I blocked my ears.

'We are! I'm so happy, Alice-chan!' She squealed out. I kept my ears blocked, and when Setsuna saw, she pouted.

'When I saw you, I thought you would be a quiet person.' I informed her when I unblocked my ears. She just grinned at me.

'Proved you wrong then. For once.' I looked at her blearily and she laughed. 'Come on, let's get to Syuuke-sensei.' We walked towards Syuuke-sensei, who handed out our keys.

'Meet your room-mates.' I looked over the teacher's shoulder to see… Kyoko and Hana. Was this coincidence? I wasn't really inclined to believe in coincidence anymore, really. Setsuna and I faced them and bowed, as manners indicated we should.

'Nice to meet you again.'

'You too.' Setsuna jumped happily over to Kyoko, and they started chatting like old friends while Hana and I walked side-by-side in comfortable silence.

'Hana! It's our cabin! Cabin 26!' Kyoko called over to us. Setsuna heaved her suitcase over the stairs and opened the door with her key. Then she peered inside and immediately lugged her suitcase and herself into the wooden cabin, yelling all the while (though a bit muffled).

'Wow! It's so homey! Look, Alice-chan!' I hefted my suitcase up the stairs and looked inside. I whistled.

There was a tiny hallway, where a little door to the right led to the toilet. On the left were spaces for where we could keep our suitcases, open locker spaces and clothes-hangers. Mini lights lit up the whole place, and blue carpet led to a smooth-wood walled room with two bunk-beds. There was a tiny kitchenette to the side.

'I call dibs on top bunk!' Setsuna called as she climbed up onto one of the bunk-beds. I shrugged.

'I'd be afraid of falling off, so I'm fine on bottom.' I went to the bed under Setsuna's and plopped some of my stuff to it. I looked to the side to see Hana had gone on the top and Kyoko got the bottom bed of the other bunk. Not that I cared much. I lay down.

This bed was kind of lumpy compared to the one in my hotel room, but not at all uncomfortable…

'Alice-chan! Don't sleep now! We have free time now, so let's explore!' I grumbled a bit and sat up.

'Ok…' I waved a goodbye to Hana and Kyoko who were unpacking while being dragged away.

'Remember breakfast is at 8:30, Hana-san, Kyoko-san!' Setsuna called over her shoulder. They both replied and soon, we were walking around on the grounds.

'Tennis courts! Look, a baseball field!' I nodded and kept walking, starting to wake up in the crisp morning mountain air. We walked around a bit, with me sometimes wandering off to look at something or another.

Eight-thirty came fast and we slowly meandered towards the eating hall. There were lines so we waited. I put sunglasses on that I had put away specifically for these types of moments. I kept a hold of Setsuna, however. Didn't want her to think I abandoned her or something.

The lines started moving forward and I piled up my plate with scrambled eggs, toast and sausages from the self-serve booths. Then I followed Setsuna to a random table and started eating. I finished in eight minutes and started waiting for Setsuna to finish her meal, when suddenly...

'Where's Alice? We need her!' A yell suddenly came out from one of the tables. Setsuna (who is actually evil) rose up my hand.

'She's here!'

'Alice!' The people yelling out to me swivelled around and faced me, their eyes lighting up with happiness once they saw me. I nearly backed away and ran out. Don't tell me this was a fan boy and they were going to do a marriage proposal or something? The students from the other school were looking in interest and I sank into my seat. The yelling resumed. 'Please join our baseball team after breakfast! We're competing against the other school's baseball team, and we need one more member! We've heard of your wonderful reflexes, so please help us!'

Silence greeted his speech. Then Setsuna, the conniving girl, yelled out through a mouthful of cereal

'She accepts!' A roar of approval filled the whole food hall (our school's part of the food hall at least. It was split into two). In the midst of all the approval, I groaned.

'Setsuna, what are you _doing?_ I was planning on sleeping after this!' I lamented. She grinned at me still chewing her rice bubbles. The stupid rice bubbles actually made her look _innocent._

'It'll be fun! Come on Alice-chan, I've already accepted it for you! Anyway, sleeping after breakfast isn't good for you.' I looked at her and sighed.

'Alright… if you say so.'

And that was how I was somehow conned into playing baseball (a game I have never played before in my whole life) rather than sleeping my free time away. So much for a relaxing camp trip. This was stressing me out already.

And it hadn't even reached two hours yet. Must be a new record.

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They gave me a helmet that didn't really fit that well because I was small. The bat seemed too heavy and everything else seemed too big. As I pushed the hard plastic helmet that was a requirement for me to bat on field, I looked at the baseball field.

A lot of people came; apparently this was the highlight of the free time after breakfast. Of course, there were activities afterwards, lunch, activity, dinner, activity then free time then sleep.

Wonderful, ne?

As I alternated between getting used to swinging the heavy bat and looking around the field, the other team's team members walked onto the field.

A particular person jumped into my vision at once, because he was tall. Baseball bat over one shoulder, cap, short black hair, ever present smile.

Yep, it was Yamamoto.

I blinked. I was meeting a lot of the main characters today, wasn't I? I surveyed the people on the other team. Strong, confident, looked pro in general. Then I looked at our team, who was looking more rag-tag by the second. As I watched the other team joke around as they checked out the field with sharp eyes (there were many girl screams that were screaming "_Yamamoto!" _in this horrendous girly fan girl voice. It lowers the impression of girls everywhere, I tell you), one thought floated across my mind.

_We… are going to get slaughtered, aren't we?_

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**Baseball match next chapter! And some activities, more character introductions, and some character interactions. ^^ So please keep on reading?**

**See you all next week! (Hopefully. Life is full of surprises. I think there is one quote that defines my life: "Life... is all about how you handle Plan B". This wisdom was imparted by my music teacher. ^^)**


	6. Though one day of baseball

**For the person who asked if Tsuna saw Alice that day when she cleaned the gym (yes, you, if you still read this), I haven't forgotten your question! It's answered here, actually. ^^**

**Thank you to all my reviewers! TT_TT Seriously, it went over 60! *sings a happy song* Thank you also, to my good old friend RGNN and my awesome sister who is beta-ing. LOVE YOU ALL!**

**Pushed it to Tuesday again. Haha… *sigh* maybe next time it would be on a Sunday… dunno. Please enjoy!**

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Yamamoto smashed them. Seriously. It was like,

'Ahaha! I am going to hit a homerun!' A random batter saunters onto field. Then…

-Yamamoto evil eyeflash -

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

'BEEP! Batter out!' And they would come back dragging the bat muttering about how the ball was so fast they nearly couldn't see it. Then random teammates would pat their back consolingly while quivering in their boots themselves.

I was freaked out. Who wouldn't be? And I was _fourth _batter, which meant that I had to see three, _three_ I tell you, people getting this treatment.

'Fourth batter, up!' I dragged myself towards the batting place (what _is_ that thing called anyway?) and stared at Yamamoto's ever smiling face as he looked with interest at me.

Of course he would. After that show at breakfast, everyone from the other school had been whispering about me. The only consolation I got was that because everyone stood up and started yelling encouragement, no-one saw me clearly. I was even kind of hoping the other team wouldn't recognise me as the "Alice" from breakfast but…

I slumped as the total idiots from my school started yelling out stuff.

'ALICE!'

'ALICE IS HERE!'

'AAAAALLLLIIIIIIICEEEE-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! LOOK OVER HEEEEEREEEEE!' Some random boy yelled out. I glanced in the direction of the shout (involuntarily, I tell you!) and immediately looked back at Yamamoto. More like stared back at Yamamoto.

It couldn't have been… My eyes must have been mistaken…

I glanced back at the random shouting boy... and the same sight met my eyes. I stared in horror before quickly tapped the base to show that I was ready.

_Just ignore it, ignore, ignore, ignore… _I chanted to myself. _You do NOT see t__hat horrendous, eye burning support poster__, Alice, _I told myself desperately, even if it seemed to eat away at the right side of my vision… Besides, I can't get distracted. Yamamoto's balls were too hard to hit.

Wait a minute… that sounded wrong.

WHAM! I blinked as I felt a wind blow all my hair back. I looked down and saw the ball, still spinning, in the catcher person's glove. (Okay, I _know_ that person isn't called the catcher person, but it's my first time playing baseball. Give me a break about the terms.)

But... Yamamoto's ball was so fast I felt a friggin' _gale_ blow past me_._

… I finally understood why the people before me were scared stiff. This time I actually readied myself as Yamamoto started pitching. He raised his leg in seemingly slow motion and…

WHAM! It went into the glove again. But this time I saw it. I blinked in surprise.

The speed of the ball was nearly, _nearly_, up to Spartan Teacher No.1's knife speed. Add the fact that Yamamoto was thirteen and the ball was wider than a knife and thus has more air resistance… I whistled in amazement.

Yamamoto was one scary thirteen year old…

This time, I prepared myself to swing the bat as Yamamoto slowly started pitching again. He threw the ball and I narrowed my eyes as I followed it.

I didn't hit away random knives for four years for nothing, you know.

I swung the bat and it made a satisfying thwack sound as I hit the ball. I heard a collective intake of breath as the ball started a trajectory that would directly sail over Yamamoto's head... And then Yamamoto jumped before grinning as he held the ball in his hands.

Oh yeah. Yamamoto had perfect reflexes, doesn't he?

'Good shot!' He said with a smile, the ball I had just hit still in his glove. Our whole school groaned. I sighed as I dragged myself and the bat back to my school's baseball team. They patted me on the back.

'As expected, you're the only one so far who could hit his shots…' they said consolingly. I shrugged as I handed the bat to the next batter.

'Let's see first.'

But their prediction proved correct. We swapped batting and fielding with us on zero points. I guess that's supposed to be bad. I picked up a glove and headed for the position that was the most far away from the bases as possible.

I couldn't catch. Simple fact of my life.

I observed the game from my vantage point. Our pitcher wasn't bad, but compared to Yamamoto's gale-inducing pitches, it was child's play. Even worse were Yamamoto's shots. Home-run in one go. I inwardly applauded.

Yamamoto was really great at baseball, wasn't he? Wait, no. Dumb question. Of course he was.

The games were like that all throughout the game. I continued to be the only one who could hit Yamamoto's shots, but he kept catching them and I couldn't seem to aim anywhere else other than near Yamamoto. Their team kept hitting and scoring as we tried to stop them.

Simply put, we were being slaughtered.

At the end of the game, both of the teams headed towards the middle of the field and we shook hands. The other teams' players all smiled at the diminutive me saying jokes like

'I can't believe such a short person could hit Yamamoto's balls!'

'Good on ya, girlie. Even most of us can't match Yamamoto's crazy pitching skills.' They all laughed at that.

'Hey, it isn't that crazy!' Yamamoto playfully protested as they jostled him. I studied him.

'You're a good baseball player.' I said to him, saying the first words that I had said to anybody after breakfast.

'Who, me?' Yamamoto pointed to himself. I nodded and smiled.

'Those were good throws.' My school's baseball team stared at me.

'Alice… is smiling…' They muttered out. The other school's baseball team just laughed (are they all Yamamotos?) and said stuff.

'Haha, you're cute when you smile! Smile more! When you don't smile, your eyes just look glary all the time! Especially because you've got single eyelids, which make your eyes look even deadlier!' The guy who said that then got whacked on the back by his friend.

'What the hell, Kaoru? You noticed that her eyes were single eyelids? Who notices that at a first meeting? And then tells the other person straight away?' The two friends began to argue (friendlily, if that was possible.)

The others in the team ignored the two. One of them grinned at me. 'I thought you were mute until you spoke to Yamamoto! Always the lady-killer, eh?' The boy saying this elbowed a clueless Yamamoto, who replied with a grin.

'No, I'm not that good with girls, Touya. They just like to share lunches sometimes, that's all.' I could practically see the whole team sweat-drop, their reaction was _that_ apparent.

I laughed (which nearly made my school's team faint in shock or something) and walked away towards a waving Setsuna. But a hand on my shoulder stopped me before I got too far.

'Hey, your name is Alice, right?' I turned around and looked up at Yamamoto. (I had to crane my neck just to look at him properly! Even though I was average height! On the short side of average, but still average, right? How come he was practically a head taller than me _already_?)

I nodded in response to his question. 'Will you be joining baseball anytime soon? You have talent, I can see it.' I shook my head.

'Not interested, sorry.' I started to turn away until his hand stopped me. I looked at him again, his eyebrows in a quizzical position.

'But you have talent!' I shrugged at him.

'I have something else–' that was all I could squeeze out until a horde of boys separated me and Yamamoto.

'No boy is allowed to touch Alice-chan without her official fan-club's permission!' They shouted simultaneously, barring Yamamoto from me. I smirked at his astounded face as my fan club advanced.

'Now, now, don't be hasty.' He stood there and smiled at them. I left him to it as I started walking back towards Setsuna.

'Good job out there.' She winked and gave me a thumbs up. Then she adjusted her glasses when I scowled at her, heavily implying with my glare (or trying to anyway) that I wouldn't have even been out here if she hadn't yelled in the food hall.

She smiled at me, pointedly ignoring my glare. 'It's nearly activity time, let's go!' She dragged me to the assembly hall without even asking me.

I secretly smiled, used to it already. If Setsuna wasn't acting like this, I would've been worried.

* * *

'You all have your group numbers already, so please go into your groups! Group 1 to the left wall, group 2 in the middle, group 3 near the doors, group 4 near the stage, and group 5 to the right wall please!' a teacher on the stage with a microphone called out.

There was a mild confusion as everyone walked to their respective areas. I just stood there.

_Aw, crap. I forgot what group I was in…_

'Group three.' Setsuna said in my ear as she walked towards group one (she knew me too well, I swear). I said a thank you in her vague direction and walked towards the group near the doors.

And surprise surprise. There was Tsuna.

'Our activity today is going to be the high-ropes course! Everyone, please follow me!' Syuuke-sensei (our group leader, obviously) called out to us and started walking towards a random batch of trees and a path. I dragged my feet as I followed.

High ropes course meant a lot of standing around doing nothing whiles others had fun. Then it would be your turn and it would be over in a few minutes (I was a pessimist. Sue me).

How fun. And Setsuna wasn't here to babble and stop my boredom either. I yawned and ignored the random boys that were hanging around me. A female voice broke my reverie.

'Alice-san! I'm so glad you're here! I thought I was stuck herewith no-one I knew!' I looked over my shoulder to see Kyoko jogging lightly towards me, with _her_ pack of boys hanging around her. To my amusement (and chagrin, because seriously,even more boys? When will I ever escape from them?), it was even bigger than mine.

I nodded to Kyoko.

'Nice to find someone I know too, Kyoko-san.' She laughed her innocent laugh (the boys that came with her practically swooned, I tell you) and smiled at me.

'Kyoko-san sounds so awkward. After talking to Hana for so long, I'll prefer just Kyoko. Is that fine with you?' She blinked at me innocently. I looked at her for a moment.

Didn't Japanese people regard saying a person's name without an honorific really intimate or something? I shrugged. Not my concern.

'That's ok then, Kyoko?' She nodded and smiled.

'Mmm! That's it!' So I slowed down my pace a bit to match hers and we walked together, me with my hands in my pockets (swinging them needed energy, and walking with my arms just hanging didn't feel right somehow). Kyoko was humming a bright tune and had a light bounce in her step.

We were total opposites, weren't we? Bright hair, grey hair, bright attitude, sardonic attitude, optimistic, pessimistic, energetic, lethargic…

But opposites attract I guess, because soon I was answering to Kyoko's questions and asking some myself. It surprised me. But Kyoko seemed to have a gift at luring words out of a person.

Heh. Maybe it was her innocent attitude or something.

'Please group up into two or threes!' I grouped up with Kyoko.

Duh. As if I would group up with air-head girls (alright, I admit it. Kyoko was kind of an air-head. But not in _that_ way, you get what I mean?) Or fan boys.

'Are there any leftovers?' A trembling hand rose up and everyone in our school just muttered something along the lines of an "it's to be expected".

Tsuna was alone again.

'Anyone want to add Sawada into their group?' Girls looked away, boys edged away and I generally felt sorry for Tsuna. I glared at everybody while following Kyoko, who was walking somewhere. We stopped in front of Tsuna. Kyoko reached out a hand.

'Do you want to join our group, Sawada-san?' All the fan boys drooped. I glared at them, standing slightly behind Kyoko. I swept my gaze to Tsuna. He flinched, but nodded at Kyoko. Kyoko beamed. I saw a _very_ visible blush spread across his cheeks.

I smirked. It seems like a crush has been born, eh?

'Great! Alice-chan, we have a new member!' I nodded at him. He bowed back. Then he took refuge behind Kyoko and hid from me.

Note to self: Try to become more approachable.

Then I remembered my fan boys and how they were only kept at bay because of my attitude. I scratched the note out. Not going to work.

'Choose a helmet that suits you!' We all picked up helmets and chose sizes that fit us. 'Everyone pick up a harness!'

When we did so, an instructor that had been walking next to Syuuke-sensei stepped up, introduced herself as "Minano-sensei" and instructed us on how to put on our harnesses, use those weird clip things and attach them, etc.

Then we walked towards the high ropes course. And was it high.

'Ten metres high! Any group want to volunteer first?' No-one put their hand up. Kyoko, looking around and noticing this, and being the good girl she raised her hand up.

'Good! A volunteer! Who wants to go up first?' Tsuna, Kyoko and I looked at the others cluelessly. Then I realised that Tsuna's legs were shaking and sighed. Then I looked up at the sky and said it.

'I'll go.'

As I trudged towards the ladder, I groaned in my head. I've never done anything like this before. Nothing high anyway. In my hotel suite, there was glass and metal railings and everything. So I wasn't scared at all.

But looking at that ropes course…

As I started climbing the ladder, a thought resounded in my brain.

_Let's see if I have a phobia for heights then, shall we?_

_

* * *

_

**A change of view on things… (Since I need to clear things up a little and this works. Kinda. This is also kind of an extra too, I guess. ^^)**

_The first time he saw __**her**__… he wasn't thinking about how embarrassing it was to land on a __**girl**__, or how the teacher would punish him this time (well, to be fair, that teacher was surprisingly creative with his punishments), but how her eyes were really piercing and __**strong**__._

Tsuna remembered it was as if she could see all his hidden embarrassments and blurt them out for the whole world to hear just for the fun of it. Then reality caught up and he had jumped off her. Or maybe he had laid there for a bit more…?

Just forget about the little details, Tsuna told himself. This was a reminiscing time. So he continued to reminisce.

'_Hiiiiiiiiie, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! I'll… I'll help you pick up your books right away!' He rambled as he stacked up all the books and rushed to his desk. He could still feel those yellow eyes glaring at his back._

Remembering back, he acted like a coward, hadn't he? Tsuna turned in his covers and thought a little more. But remembering what had happened next…

'_Landing on the cute transfer student? Dream on!' He sneaked a look at the new transfer student._

_She wasn't cute. That was what he would say. She looked like the poster girl for normality (except the eyes. __**They**__ were the perfect representation of aliens__, even though they were average sized, average shaped, average in everything. But...they were fluorescent YELLOW. That just emphasised how she permanently glared at everything (what had anyone done to her? Her permanent glare was scary!), her single eyelids slitting her already glaring eyes more__). _

_Her face was normal. Forehead... was just a forehead. It wasn't particularly wide or narrow or big or small. Same with her nose, which wasn't particularly long or short, (although it was kinda snub-ended) and her mouth. She wasn't skinny or fat, she wasn't tall or short, and her hair wasn't long or short or cut in a weird way (although it was grey. Like a koala-bear grey), her skin wasn't especially smooth or pale or tanned._

_She was one of those people with looks that would just blend in with the crowd and you wouldn't look at her twice. _

_But the thing that set her apart… was her __**presence**__. It was… special somehow. __It was like everyone just automatically noticed her and then couldn't stop noticing her, even though she was so average (except for her freaky eyes)._

Everyone had felt it, Tsuna bet.

_After hearing the teacher just letting go of him being late though, he nearly fainted with relief _(He should've acted stronger! Maybe it would've gotten rid of the No-good Tsuna earlier on, at least). _The__n the__ new student __had __started her introduction and frightened half the class out of its wits._

_Everyone was paying attention to her__. He had realised (later on) that the girls had been whispering,__ the boys __had been__ sneaking glances. It became really apparent when the teacher called on her to answer a question they technically wouldn't have covered yet._

_A question that she had answered in three seconds._

'_Seventeen over thirty-two.'_

He remembered that he hadn't even understood why the answer had to be a fraction. He had been pretty ignorant back then, hadn't he? Tsuna thought fondly as he finally pushed the blankets away.

It was just too hot… Tsuna chuckled quietly when he remembered the next series of thoughts that had penetrated his brain on that particular day.

_He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the new transfer student __(__Alice__? Was her name Alice?)__ was still glaring at him._

_Why was she glaring at __**him**__ anyway? The logical part of his brain reasoned out that maybe, just __**maybe**__ it was because he had fell on her and scattered all her books. _

Tsuna out-right laughed at that. Of course that was the reason! What else would it have been? Though, knowing her laid-back personality personally now, he wondered why she had still been glaring at him. He should ask later, shouldn't he? But not now. She might murder him or something if he woke her up too early.

_He had noticed things, little things of course. Like how the whole class seemed to call him No-good Tsuna less __after she came __(though they never stopped) and how she would glare at the teacher whenever __**he**__had__ called him No-good Tsuna. _

_The thing that __had __changed his view on her the most, however, was when he watched her clean the gym all by herself while letting him sleep. It was his job after all, why was she doing it for him? He was No-good Tsuna, everyone left him behind._

_Then she __had __put his jacket over him, and he felt warm__, literally and figuratively__._

_It was as if someone __had finally__ accepted him for who he was. Someone who wasn't family._

_And it felt nice._

Tsuna stretched as he got off his bed and opened his curtains. Then he walked down the carpeted hall to the kitchen where something that smelled nice was cooking. He was surprised to see all of his friends at the kitchen table.

'Juudaime!' A certain octopus haired person yelled as he half-rose out of his seat, nearly tipping it over.

'Yo, Tsuna.' A tall black-haired guy raised one hand in greeting. Then got shoved.

'Don't greet the Juudaime so lightly!' A cow-horned afro in a matching cow suit yawned on the table and mumbled at the noise.

'Now, now, don't get so mad…' Tsuna grinned as he looked over at the cook. He blinked in surprise.

'You're cooking? It smells good, way better than the first time you cooked for us.' A girl with orange hair laughed gently and poked the person in question with a finger.

'True!'

Irritable yellow eyes flashed at them both as she flipped some pancakes.

'Stop talking or I won't let you have any.'

Tsuna smiled warmly and sat down.

'Yes, yes.'

* * *

**Guess when this little excerpt is set (it may be cannon or not, you decide) and if you get it right, I'll give that person a mention and an answer any question related to the story. ^^ And answer in a review! (Because I sometimes forget to check my PM box so... yeah.)**

**Hope you liked it! Please review? Anonymous reviews are accepted, to those who don't know. And I just love knowing how people think of my stories so… please? XD Thank you! (See you all next week! Hopefully.)**


	7. Was enough for her

**I'm BACKS! Holidays are nearly over and I was like, why not get off my big fat virtual butt and start writing for once and update? And so I did! Expect normal-ish regular-ish updates from now on (I retract my weekly thing. Two stories at once are tiring).**

**For people who read this and read my other story as well: Wait another week or so for the chapter. I'm going through my plot points. It's taking a surprisingly long time. =="**

**THANKYOU FOR ALL YOUR REVIEWS! Story-alerters, favouriters, my sister and my good old friend RandomGothicNinjaNerd (RGNN), I LOVE YOU ALL!**

**So, now getting on with the story... (Since I know you all don't appreciate my rants. XD)**

**

* * *

**

High ropes course. Most of the time, it would be fun. I have to admit though; the view was actually pretty nice up here, since the camp was located in a random forest.

Have I described the camp? I'm sure I haven't (and if I have, just go with me. I'm delaying the inevitable: stepping onto that rusting, extremely thin-and-fragile-and-old-and-weak looking wire that looks like it would snap at any minute). And well, since I can see the camp perfectly from up here.

Ten metres in the air.

The camp was shaped interestingly. Like a huge gourd, there were two main clearings/places that were filled with buildings and grass and not many trees. Connecting the two clearings was a narrower strip of clearing lined by the cabins. Girls on one side, boys on the other. Then there were tiny places like the highly dangerous ropes course I was currently on right now dotting all around the place.

The instructor kindly let me look down at the tiny looking people on the ground for about half a minute while explaining the system. Not that I was really listening.

'You can step onto the wire now.' Noticing my panicked look she tacked on a, 'It's perfectly safe, I assure you. And I can always go help you if you hit any troubles.' She nodded at me encouragingly.

I looked at the wire, looked at the weird clip things connected to a wire overhead that would save me if I ever fell, looked at the wire again, took a deep breath and...

Stepped on the wire.

There were encouragements as I slowly walked across the first part of the high ropes course.

It was quite easy to notice their personalities like this (I know, I was still processing information at such a crucial, life-threatening moment. I blame Spartan Teacher No. Two)

There were bright, innocent people like Kyoko who, being my partner, had a job that entailed checking if I clipped my clips right from the ground, if I looked ok, and just yell encouragements. Those people yelled encouragements (I think Kyoko would yell encouragements anyway, even if I wasn't her partner).

Then there were the cunning and mildly curious/afraid-of-what's-going-to-happen type of people. Those would look on shrewdly, at my expression, etc, and deem if it was safe, fun, cool, that type of thing.

Then there were the bored people who didn't want to be here. Their reactions ranged from staring boredly at the forest, or lying down and staring boredly at the sky.

The nervous ones were easy to pick out as I slowly walked across the wire (yes, I was still walking over the wire). They bored holes in my body as they peered at me with nervous eyes, gnawing their little nails off.

'Do you think that Yanu-kun will notice me if I go on?' I grimaced as I finally reached the first checkpoint (a lovely board with cracks big enough for me to see through and see Kyoko's face. Lovely.)

Of course. The boy-obsessors. How could I forget about _them_?

Amazingly, Tsuna dominated a whole category by his own. A fearful girly-looking, shy boy, with a kind-of 'wanting to join but can't should-I-go-and-approach-Kyoko-chan?' type of face.

Nobody else was in that category.

Tsuna should be proud.

I smiled at the thought of Tsuna being proud of being different. We shared something in common. After Tsuna meets Reborn, he would begin wishing for normality.

Just like me.

I unclipped my first clip from the first part of the course's safety line (first part: wire, second part: tyres, third part: plain thick log, fourth part: no helpful balancing wires but loose strings, fifth part: swinging rings) to the next.

'Check!' I called down the Kyoko. She nodded as she affirmed that I had really clipped onto the safety wire.

'Check!' She called out cheerfully. I smiled down at her and did the same with my second clip.

Tyres are a wonderful invention. But not when you're on a ropes course. I noticed that the next contender had already started climbing the ladder and so stepped onto the tyres that were connected, but not by much.

I got through that safely, and the thick log was easy. The fourth part was a bit tricky, with the wind and all, but it was fine.

'Check!' Kyoko called up to me, raising her voice a little over the wind. I nodded an affirmative and tugged on both of the clips double-checking they really were secure and looked at the rings.

The first ring was easy. It was connected to the fifth checkpoint. But the next ring...

I looked at it with narrowed eyes.

A sturdy plastic ring hanging from a thick rope that wouldn't normally move that much. It would be like stepping a normal step on normal days.

But today, _today_ (why today?) there was a strong wind blowing. It blew the ring out of reach.

It was either jump (not that it matters with a harness... It's the concept) or just stay clinging to the platform which was not built for two people.

I looked back at the person behind me and he messaged to me he was ready to go onto the wire with the loose strings, the fourth part. He wasn't allowed to go on until I, on the fifth part, went onto my part.

So I took a deep breath, looked at Kyoko and Tsuna (did he look worried? But Tsuna looks worried all time...) and jumped.

The first I felt was the harness being dragged by me forward, the clips dragging behind me. The second was the black ring, which was approaching just ever so slowly. The third were my hands, reaching it and _touching it..._

I landed, heaved my feet to stand on the thing and gulped.

One down. Four to go.

* * *

'Good job, Alice-chan!' Kyoko beamed at me. I smiled at her and put my hands in my pockets. There were freezing, the wind up there was so much stronger than on land.

'Want to go next?' I gestured to the non-existent line, since everyone didn't want to go next. Kyoko smiled even wider.

'Should I?' then she looked at Tsuna and asked politely 'Sawada-san! Do you want to go before me?' Tsuna shook his head wildly (his hair whipping side-to-side. He was honestly just _so CUTE!), _his harness half-falling off.

'No, Kyoko-san!'

_San? Doesn't he call her chan? When does he drop this formality? _

'Then I'll go then!' Kyoko happily went up to the ladder and when the instructor called

'Next!' she climbed the ladder happily. I walked forward slowly, pulling Tsuna by the collar when he seemed like he was going to stay at the back.

'We're both Kyoko's partners. So let's help her like we're supposed to do.' I looked at him and he shrunk from me yet again.

Then I remembered something Setsuna had said before

'_Alice-chan! You honestly do look like glaring when you put your bored look on! Smile more!' _

_I looked at her in surprise. She huffed._

'_But I'm bored, Setsuna.' She just sighed and patted my head._

'_You don't have one social brain cell in your head. That's why you're such good friend!' She squealed the last bit and hugged me tight. I flailed a bit while inwardly raising my eyebrow. I don't get her. But that's the point sometimes, isn't it?_

I smiled at Tsuna. Soften my face a bit. Scrunch up my eyes so that they aren't as piercing.

Then my face started to hurt from overuse and I just abandoned everything except the smiling.

'Alice-chan! I'm starting!' I smiled and yelled out some random encouragements.

It was fun, in a way. The morning passed in a blur after Kyoko finished her course (Tsuna refused to participate, unfortunately) and we set off to lunch after awhile. Setsuna met up with me and babbled happily about canoeing and how she tripped and fell in the mud.

I told her blandly that might be the reason her hair was suddenly brown and smelled. She punched me in the arm and continued talking.

Setsuna, knowing there would be a tiny break after lunch, rushed off to shower after gobbling her lunch (how she talked so fast and finished her full plate in eight minutes is a miracle to me) leaving me behind with a table to myself.

I fended off fan-boys with my glare, stuffed the rest of my food into my mouth as fast as I can and walked out of the cafeteria.

Yamamoto and the baseball players from the other school waved, I smiled and nodded. Kyoko and Hana noticed me and smiled. I waved and went back to the cabin we had been assigned to.

Smiling when I heard Setsuna _singing (_weird_) in the shower_ (good material for later use), I went and refilled my water bottle from the huge bottles of water Grey had packed into my bag.

He said he didn't trust the water sources in my camp.

I told him he was paranoid.

But anyway, I knocked on the shower door telling Setsuna that she only had five more minutes left (which she shrieked at) and left, water bottle all full and ready.

I rejoined my group and Setsuna rushed in with her hair wet after four minutes. She breathed a visible sigh of relief when she realised she wasn't late and headed towards her group.

I greeted a Kyoko and a twitchy Tsuna who _seemed_ like he wanted to approach Kyoko but didn't have the guts.

Seems like I had to take things in my own hands.

Sighing, I sat right next to Kyoko, Kyoko shifting so I had more space so that she sat right next to Tsuna and me. I smirked evilly. It's good for personal development anyway.

* * *

I stared disbelievingly.

Not serious, were they? I looked at the serious face of my teachers, instructors and fellow students.

Afternoon activity: fishing.

They expected us primary school students to sit in a small cramped boat with a fishing pole, each facing different directions, trying to catch (seemingly) non-existent fish in the afternoon _sunlight?_

Oh how I hated sunburns. Even if I lather myself with that sunscreen stuff, it doesn't work. My pale skin burns. That was how things worked in the natural world.

I sighed, thinking that it wasn't fair how other pale people went into the sun and never get burnt. I pulled out a random floppy hat and a baggy long-sleeved shirt which earned some weird looks from fellow group members.

It was hot. It was sunny. It was the _afternoon_ and I was going to wear long-sleeves?

I could practically see their thoughts.

But! To prevent myself from burning, I will do this!

I heard the teacher say something about keeping the groups from before and people groaning before Kyoko and Tsuna, somewhere slightly behind me, magically appeared carrying three fishing poles.

'You ready?'

'No.' Kyoko laughed, and Tsuna looked at her adoringly. I smirked at him and he noticed, which made him blush and stutter and nearly fall onto his face.

I reached out an arm and stopped him from face-planting, straightened him up like I did in the dodge-ball game and reached to take a fishing-pole from Kyoko.

Tsuna, with his face bright red followed suit, and we were soon sitting back to back with fish poles ready for use.

And guess what?

I was facing the sun.

My happiness knows no abounds.

* * *

Dinner was wonderful. Lasagnes, gravy with peas, smooth mashed potato, and chocolate cake to end off the meal. Lovely.

Free time, the activity. I heard it was either bushwalking (at night. What happened to child protection?) or bush-_dancing_, which I wanted to avoid at all costs. Though the first didn't seem that appealing either, with those huge mosquitoes out there...

Walking with Setsuna back to our cabin, I fended off mosquitoes.

'Yeah! And archery was so fun! You should do it sometimes, Alice-chan!'

'Fishing was boring. It was just sitting there being baked in the sun.'

'... You don't like the sun much do you, Alice-chan.'

'Yep.'

And when we reached our cabin, I made sure to put on an extra thick layer of insect repellent.

'What's with the smell?' Setsuna said, wrinkling her nose as she walked out of the bathroom, finished with brushing her teeth.

'Insect repellent. There're thousands of mosquitoes out there.' Setsuna blinked at me and laughed.

'You don't like insects either, do you?'

'Yep. I hate them.'

I packed my insect repellent back into my trusty bag and followed Setsuna out the door.

'Free time. Might as well do something fun. I saw some ping-pong tables, want to play?' And without even my answer, she took my arm and dragged me off to a random building with all its lights on. We entered, and saw that the first room was occupied by tonnes of boys doing _something_ (who knew what boys did?) and went into the moderately empty second room instead.

There were a couple of students lounging around talking or playing ping-pong around, so we just went into an unoccupied table and played our hearts out.

To my annoyance, Setsuna seemed to always win.

'You hit it too hard, Alice-chan! Moderate your power!'

'I'm trying, Setsuna!' As I hit the ball off the table once again. I wiped sweat off my forehead. 'What's the time?' Setsuna looked and nearly screamed.

'We only have three minutes left! Come on!'

We ran.

And I'm glad to say, we made it.

Just.

I need to go buy a watch.

* * *

'Tonight, we're going BUSHWALKING!' The teacher yelled enthusiastically to the students. Some of the students cheered. 'So get your hiking spirit ready and we'll go out into the great unknown together!'

More unenthusiastic cheering.

'We start in ten minutes! Please go into your previous groups, the groups that you have made in your activity groups, and wait for further instructions!'

I looked around. Grouped with Kyoko and Tsuna again.

As I looked across the masses that seemed to surround me (of course, never forget the calls of "I couldn't be grouped with Alice/Kyoko-chan!" from the fan-boys and "I couldn't get grouped with Yamamoto/Maeda-kun!" from the fan-girls) it was all very confusing.

Trust me. Having your name called out from fifty different places is very disconcerting for a used-to-be-loner like me.

Should've become used to it already though. _Should have _being the main words here.

'Alice-chan! Have you seen Tsuna?' I turned gladly to Kyoko's voice.

'No. Should we search for him then?' Kyoko looked around curiously.

'We should. We only have eight minutes to find him after all.' She smiled at me and the crowd, making random boys go "Oooh" and girls make jealous faces.

And so we searched in that crowded, stuffy room that somehow had mosquitoes in it.

* * *

**If it's a bit choppy, I'm sorry! I'm trying to get into the writing mode again!**

**Review? I love all your opinions! And remember, anon reviews are accepted. XD See you all in the next chapter! (Hope you all haven't abandoned this...)**


	8. The Dame chose his knight

**KeiGinya has helpfully pointed out that the ages are all wrong in comparison to the schooling system in Japan. So now, Alice is now twelve. And so is Tsuna, Kyoko, etc. ^^ I hope this is not so much of a problem to you all!**

**Thank you to my reviewers, readers, story-alerters, favouriters. You all make my day and THANK YOU! (and of course, thanks to my beta my sister. Mhmm)**

**I have decided to update fortnightly (with _maybe_ random updates in between). Now you all know my updating schedule, and I don't want to drag this along any longer…**

**Please enjoy!**

* * *

Tsuna was standing in a random corner looking scared out of his mind. Not that I knew the reason.

'Tsu–Sawada.' I called out to him, tugging on Kyoko's arm to tell her that I had already found Tsuna. Kyoko turned around and beamed at him, making Tsuna blush (yet again) and me wanting to face-palm myself at Kyoko's obliviousness.

Tsuna, noticing my bored face, suddenly stiffened up and rushed towards us. I raised an eyebrow and shrugged, looking at the stage where a bunch of teachers and camp people were standing.

'Alice-chan!' I heard Setsuna's voice ring from somewhere to the left. I looked around and spotted a waving arm and two tall people weaving through the crowd.

'Setsuna.' I said to her when she reached me, towing her partner behind her. She laughed at my greeting (which made me strangely mildly offended).

'Always so cool, Alice-chan!'

'I'm not trying to be cool. It's just that there isn't anything else to say.' Setsuna raised an eyebrow at me and gestured to the tall, (I guess) good looking boy behind her.

'This is my partner, Maeda Yanushita-kun. We're family friends.' I bowed a little at him, and Kyoko and Tsuna peered around me curiously. I briefly wondered if this Yanushita Maeda was the "Yanu-kun" those girls were talking about at the high ropes course.

'Nice to meet you. I'm Bright Alice, and my partners are Sasagawa Kyoko and Sawada Tsunayoshi.'

Kyoko bowed with a slight smile on her face and Tsuna hurriedly did a deep bow. Maeda just laughed and did a slight bow.

'I'm honoured to greet the "Charismatic Enigma" and the "Innocent Flower" at the same time.' My eyebrow twitched.

It was pretty obvious who the "Innocent Flower" was. Kyoko. So that means I was… I choked on the thought.

Charismatic Enigma? Who made that name up? It was horrible!

'Alice-chan, you look a bit paler than usual. Are you ok?' Setsuna peered into my face. I waved her off.

'Charismatic _Enigma?_' I choked out. Setsuna caught on straight away. Maeda and Tsuna caught on a little later. Kyoko just kept looking around innocently (like her name, I thought bitterly. At least hers wasn't _charismatic enigma_). Setsuna burst out laughing.

At least Maeda tried to stifle his chuckle. Tsuna had a disbelieving expression on his face (for whatever reason).

'You're caught up on your nickname? You didn't seem the type!' Setsuna laughed out openly, bending over in an attempt to get air. I looked at her in affront.

'The name is too!' I didn't have a word to describe it.

'Well…' Setsuna started, having that expression on her face that meant she was going to say a joke at my expense but was interrupted when the speakers crackled.

'Anyone who hasn't found their partner yet, raise their hands up!' The room fell silent as a few hands were raised and people parted for them to join their partners.

'Then get into your groups! Group one to the left…' Setsuna and Maeda left. Kyoko, Tsuna and I all shuffled towards the doors where the rest of our group was designated. Syuuke-sensei was there with two of those camp people.

'You ready?' Syuuke-sensei asked enthusiastically.

'Yes!' We all chorused like the good little boys and girls we were.

'Everyone remembered their flashlights?'

'Yes!'

'Then, let's go!'

Our group left first, being closest to the doors. As we traipsed through the camp, we suddenly veered off the path. Syuuke-sensei stopped us there.

'This is Momo-sensei.' One of the camp leader people waved at us, blue hair reflecting the moonlight. 'And this is Kanagawa-sensei.' The other one waved.

I looked around. The moonlight was pretty bright, despite it not being a full moon. The clouds were pretty, a few wisps here and there but we couldn't see the stars yet with a light that lit the path behind us. Kyoko was standing next to me, and I looked behind to see Tsuna at the back of the crowd (somehow).

I sighed and reached out, tugging Tsuna forward so that he was standing between Kyoko and me. I snorted in amusement. I could even see Tsuna's blush in this type of lighting. Was being next to Kyoko becoming too much for him?

'Momo-sensei will be explaining the activity.'

'Yes!' We all chorused again.

A girl next to me nudged my elbow and handed me a stack of papers.

'Take one pass it on,' she said and I took on and gave the stack to Tsuna with the same instructions. I watched him give the stack clumsily to Kyoko. Shortly after, a woman's voice addressed us.

'Does everyone have a map?'

'Yes!' The Momo woman nodded.

'Tonight's activity is called Demon Hunting!' There were a few gasps and "oooohs" at that. 'Although it is bushwalking, there is also a little bit of orienteering thrown in. You see the map?'

I looked down at the map. There were a few paths with a few places that had triangles and squares marked on them.

'There is a question on the back that you need to answer. The triangles on the map show where the locations for the letters of the answer are. You are currently on the little circle on the left.' Everyone looked simultaneously at the circle.

'But it's dark, sensei. Are you sure you want us to do orienteering in the dark?' Momo-sensei laughed.

'The area is quite small, and there are teacher checkpoints everywhere. The squares tell you where the teachers are, so don't worry. We're thinking that you all would be finishing in about half an hour.'

Chatting suddenly flooded the area.

'Oh, the other group is going to catch up to you soon and you'll all lose the advantage, so switch on your torches and let's go!'

Kyoko walked forward and motioned to us with her hand. I switched on my torch and walked with her, keeping an eye on Tsuna so he didn't get left behind.

'So, the first checkpoint is…' I said, head stuck in the map.

'Here!' Kyoko said cheerfully, holding a piece of paper that came from a stack on a little random table just _there_ in the bush, looking out of place.

I blinked.

'Yeah. There.' Tsuna stifled a chuckle and I glared at him. He "Hiiiiieeeee!"ed at me and went behind Kyoko. Then realised what he was doing and hurriedly scampered backwards where he tripped over and bashed his head on a tree.

I walked quickly towards him. Kyoko was already next to him.

'Are you alright, Sawada-san?' Kyoko asked with an angelic concerned face. Tsuna looked at her like she was a goddess reborn (ha, reborn). I stuck out a hand to help him up until I realised that Kyoko had stuck out a hand to help as well.

Tsuna stared at the two hands that were proffered to him.

_As if he would pass off a chance to touch Kyoko's hand. Ain't he afraid of me or something?_

I was going to retract my hand (hey, if you were to choose between a glary person and a smiley one, I would choose the smiley one. So what's the point in offering my hand?) when Tsuna suddenly reached out and grabbed my hand, _my _hand to get up and stumbled while trying to.

I did what I did in the dodge-ball game and in the afternoon where we had been fishing. Pulled him up, brushed off random twigs, and made sure he was stable before I left him for my torch and map.

'And the next checkpoint is…' I grumbled to myself, Kyoko cheerfully just walking ahead again.

'I think I found it, Alice-san!' I looked up and saw Kyoko waving yet _another_ piece of paper. I glared at the map.

_You're no help at all. Stupid map._

_

* * *

_

**Tsuna's view**

For Tsuna, it was like a dream come true. He was paired with _Kyoko_. The Namimori North Elementary school idol. The person at the top of the social food chain. Super cute, innocent laugh and a face like an angel…

Then there was Alice. Her face was unmoving unless she was with her best friend Setsuna, unwontedly popular, had an over obsessive fan club, is _also_ on the top of the social food chain, but unlike Kyoko who was on the top of the social food chain…

Tsuna mused a bit.

Kyoko was like an innocent flower that everyone protected. Alice was more like a hawk which glared at everything but was still adored anyway.

Tsuna believed in the stout difference.

Alice was just plain _creepy_ to be around. Didn't help, of course, that there were the rumours that she was an extortionist.

Extortionist! It sounded as bad as the Mafia! He never wanted to have contact with any of _those _bad guys. But then she sometimes acted like his mother on occasion that made him think that _maybe she wasn't so bad after all…_

Then he saw her at dinner glaring at anyone who neared the table like a shark preparing to bite anyone that passed and retracted the idea that she could even be _remotely_ nice.

So when he tripped and Kyoko (_aaah, Kyoko-chan. You're so cute but I know I can't be with you…) _extended her hand to help him, why, _why _was he looking at Alice's hand instead?

She was scowling. And when he did take her hand, she acted like his mother again and brushed off any offending twigs in his hair, and made sure he wouldn't fall again (he wasn't that useless was he? Then he nearly tripped and thought yeah, maybe he really _was_ that useless). Then she walked away like nothing had happened.

Maybe, Tsuna thought as he looked at Kyoko who was waving the third letter she found and Alice whose head was still in the map, that maybe it was because

_He felt so safe when she was around_

**

* * *

**

Alice view

I found three letters. Kyoko found nine. Tsuna found one.

We finished the "Demon Hunt" in ten minutes because of Kyoko's freaky luck at finding the mini tables. The answer was lame.

Q: How did the pear disappear from the table?

A: The demon ate it.

…

Seriously? I traipsed through the mini park fending off huge mosquitoes with my insect repellent looking at the map and searching for the letters for _that?_

The answer was totally random! It didn't have anything related to the question at all! (Was the answer why this was called "Demon Hunt"? If it was, adults rise to new heights of Lameness).

Kyoko was telling the teacher we had finished, and the teacher was telling her back that we could go back to our cabins now, if we wished.

So I got up and left, waving a goodbye to Kyoko and Tsuna. Going back to our cabin, I opened it and closed the door carefully, ignoring the dark. Then I switched on all the lights and went into the toilet to shower. Then I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, did all the other stuff you do in toilets and climbed into my bunk into my sleeping bag.

Sleep.

Sometimes I wish I would never wake up and just float around in the dreams that slip into my head but then I remember my duty and promise and realise I just can't.

What was the meaning of me being here? I silently thought out. Maybe Bill would answer or something, in the light behind my eyelids.

But there was no answer.

**

* * *

**

'Morning, Sunshine!' Setsuna's cheery voice seemed to pound into my eardrums and I groaned and attempted to lift my blanket over my head…

To realise I was in a sleeping bag and hence I had no blanket.

'It's time to wake up!'

'Yeah, Alice-chan, Hana, we need to go to breakfast in eight minutes.'

'Urgh.' Was Hana's coherent sentence to this overly-bright assault in the early morning.

'Here, here.' I muttered as I turned over. Setsuna was on my case at once.

'Oh no you don't.' I opened my eyes blearily to see Setsuna's shadow menacingly rolling up her sleeves. Then…

I blinked.

'Want toast, Alice-chan?'

'Setsuna?' I was lost for a bit and I rubbed my eyes. 'I swear I was just in my warm comfortable sleeping bag just now…' Setsuna chuckled nervously.

'Eh, but Alice-chan, toast or cereal?'

'Toast. I don't like…' I looked at the unappetising mush many students had 'cereal.' Setsuna gave me toast and handed me my plate, where I loaded it with scrambled eggs, baked beans, sausages, bacon…

'You eat a lot.'

'I know.'

And that was the end of that. Breakfast was uneventful, free time was uneventful too. Refilling my water bottle yet again from the huge bottles of water in my luggage and packing what I thought I needed, I left with Setsuna to the group meeting place.

'Similar groups from before! Group one to the left…'

I went towards the door while Setsuna waved a quick goodbye. Kyoko was standing there smiling.

'Had a good night's sleep, Alice-chan?'

'Yes. You?' She nodded.

'Yes, me too.' We looked towards where Syuuke sensei was.

'Today's activity will be…' He paused dramatically and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. 'Canoeing!'

And we all trudged towards to river to where the paddles were kept, and then went to the canoes.

Since I did not enjoy the activity, I will say little about it. The only thing that made it amusing were the silly people who tried to stand and tipped their canoe over.

I made sure to carefully step so I wouldn't trip over like Setsuna (the mud was notoriously slippery) and went back to lunch. Setsuna talked about her activities again, and I contributed that I had done the activities she did yesterday.

She grinned for no reason when I talked.

She was just strange like that.

And so, lunch, a bit of free time and I was off to the next activity.

Archery.

I was never good at aim. Actually, I didn't even _know_ how to aim. During my training with Spartan Teacher No. One, all he did was throw meat cleavers and I had to hit them away.

Or get hurt.

And obviously, I never did think much about aim. Just whack whack whack GAAAH I MISSED! Type of thing.

'Get into groups of five and we'll explain the rules.' I randomly joined a group and listened with half an ear.

When it was my turn, I just got the bow, notched the arrow, pulled (hey, that was actually easy. Why were the other girls straining?), looked at the target along the shaft of the arrow and released. It hit the most outer bit, the white bit.

_Hmm. I thought it would miss._

I tried the next time and I got it in the blue part. The third and last arrow on the other side of the target, but also in the blue part.

And then I noticed (when the teacher called "All clear!" so we could collect our arrows and tally up our score) that I was the only one that got all three arrows on the target.

I smirked.

_Heh. I might not be so bad after all._

* * *

**I hope you enjoyed it! Review! You all spur me on and remind me that my story actually got readers out there. ^^**

**See you all next update!**


	9. And the day went by normally

**HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! (heh, I put it off for one day just to do this.)**

***tut: excuses excuses***

**Shut up sister! I really was! Anyway, THANK YOU FOR READING, HAVE A LOVELY TIME, HOPE YOU ENJOY AND I LOVE ALL YOUR REVIEWS! *sugar-high***

* * *

I watched Tsuna as he shakily picked up the bow and stood in front of the target. His arms strained as he tried to pull back the string, and when he let go…

The arrow landed only half-way to the targets. Immediately, there were jeers, although many of the other boys also had their arrows not reaching the target (including one boy who had nearly stabbed his own foot. Didn't they listen to the safety precautions?).

'No-good Tsuna really lives up to his name!'

'Ha, yeah.'

It continued for awhile, the camp instructor and teacher somewhere at the back watching the students for safety precautions but too far away for them to hear us. It got to the stage that I couldn't stand it anymore. I stood up.

'Shut up.' I said, really glaring at them now. They froze. A cool breeze ripped through the clearing then and I quickly sat down to avoid shivering.

**

* * *

****Random boy's view**

I've always been loyal to Kyoko, that Innocent Flower that everyone tries to protect, but seeing Alice-chan, the infamous Charismatic Enigma... so cool! So awesome! So fearless and strong! And her glare! So powerful! When she looked at me with her glaring headlights meeting my own dull black eyes... I think I've just fallen in... in... OH I CAN'T STAND IT!

**

* * *

**

**Alice view**

'All clear!' The camp-person called for the people to collect their arrows. As they trudged, I heard whispers.

'That glare was so terrifying I couldn't move.'

'Yeah, I thought I had gotten used to her glares, but that was one hundred times deadlier!'

'Does that mean…' Another person trailed off.

'That she hasn't really glared at us before this? I think so too.' They shivered for a reason.

'But! Wasn't that just so cool! Her eyes were so icy and the lighting just lit up her face and that breeze blew her ponytail just a bit so that…' All the boys squealed. I shuddered, Kyoko next to me looking at me in concern.

'She really is the…'

They paused and yelled in unison.

'CHARISMATIC ENIGMA!' The teacher frowned at them and motioned them to quiet down, even from his distance. I winced at the bad nick-name. I was going to kill the person who made that up, I swear.

'Gosh, I think I just fell for her… My heart won't stop beating...' A blushing black-eyed guy who had just insulted Tsuna said.

'Don't try dude, her fan-club's rumoured to be crazy protective.'

'Then I'll join her fan-club!'

I massaged my temples. Will I ever get away from fan-boys? My headache was starting to increase when suddenly a water bottle got shoved into my vision. Kyoko smiled angelically at me.

'They say water helps headaches, Alice-chan.' I smiled at her gratefully (pretending the _boys _next to me were non-existent blobs of… something. Boys were such headaches, seriously. No offense to more likeable boys out there.)

To my irritation, even though all my arrows hit the target, not once in the whole session did I hit bullseye. Or the yellow part around it. Some people _fluked_ and got it. I grumbled to Setsuna at dinner.

She laughed at me.

What a nice friend she is.

And so, after dinner was a little free time, then night activity.

'Movie night tonight! Everyone go to the hall!' And so with some cheers and groans from the ones that stuffed themselves too full, we all walked to the hall to sit on the carpet as the huge projector played a romance comedy onto a white sheet... thing.

In the middle of all the boys fake vomiting sounds in a kiss scene and all the girl's starry eyes, I watched the two protagonists eat each other's face off.

Hey, wasn't this a G-rated movie?

I sighed and massaged my head. I was getting an awful lot of headaches lately.

I blame it on stress.

And so, after the kinda G-rated movie, we went back to our cabins (I ran so I could hog the shower) and plonked into bed once again. But this time, everyone (Kyoko, Hana, Setsuna and me, though those three rotated as they went shower) played card games until two in the morning, eating cavity inducing lollies all the way.

It was surprisingly nice to just be giggling like there wasn't a care in the world.

So when Setsuna's cheery voice came slicing through my ears five hours later, I could say truthfully that _I wasn't in a good mood._

Sleep-deprivation + short temper + bright-sounding-voices-waking-up-the-sleep-deprived-person-who-just-happened-not-to-be-a-morning-person = …

Drum roll please.

Breakfast

Yep, I was standing there with a plate again looking murderously at Setsuna as she just beamed at me doing the same thing as yesterday, asking innocently 'toast or pancakes?'

I glared at her and stalked past her, my hair going into my face because _someone_ had dragged me out of bed without getting hair-ties. Come to think of it, it should be the first time I had my hair down in public. I shrugged and loaded my plate with mini packets of jam and butter and pancakes and syrup.

I tucked my hair behind my ear while looking around to see any empty tables. Then I saw my fan-club staring at me.

I am not going to even guess why.

And so, gorging myself on pancakes which were wonderful (maybe camp food was naturally this great in this world. I remember all the camps back in my first life and they had horrible food) we left for activities (after, of course, stealing one of Setsuna's hair-ties). Heading for the doors automatically, I was amicably chatting to Kyoko when activities were announced.

Abseiling. A wonderful past time where you dangle with harnesses and a rope backwards down a vertical wall.

Kyoko chewed her lip in worry.

'Do you think I can do this Alice-chan?' I tried looking at her while adjusting my helmet straps.

'Of course. Anyone could do at least that much.' And to prove that I was right, I went before Kyoko to soothe her worries.

I am just so nice, I know.

I jumped a bit and landed, letting go of the rope again and jumped, going down as fast as I wished for it. After landing and getting rid of the weird karabiner thingies, I patted Kyoko on the shoulder and gave her a little shove towards the wall, giving her a smile.

She smiled back (my social skills are improving!) she went and did it absolutely fine. See? No worries.

So we went back to lunch (camp was getting weirdly monotonous) and had our free activity time, which was a whole activity period of free time so that we could go jump the pool or go on the playground, etc.

I went back to the lovely cabin and made instant ramen with the little kitchenette, even though I just had lunch.

Just suddenly had a huge craving for it.

But anyway, I was quite glad I was in our cabin for most of the activity time, because when I went to the pool to greet Kyoko, she was _surrounded_ by guys _and_ girls fawning over her. She _was_ the school idol. Even I had to admit she looked cute in her swim-suit.

I shook my head; I'm so glad Grey packed baggy t-shirts and loose jeans for me.

Then Kyoko noticed me. She beamed and waved.

'Al –' I shook a frantic no, my arms in a cross in front of me and my hair flying all over the place. Kyoko frowned confusedly at me and finished her greeting. '– ice-chan?'

People swivelled around at my name. Too late. They'd noticed me. I smiled awkwardly and waved back at Kyoko, whose smile had returned at my wave.

'Alice!'

'Join us?' A group of girls I didn't know called me over. I guess they were from Kyoko's school; they wouldn't be acting so friendly if they knew the stupid rumours. I beamed. My first invitation to a group!

'Okay!' I carefully walked over to them, minding with careful steps on the slippery tiles. Then I sat down in a near available chair and watched them have fun in the pool, participating in some conversations sometimes.

'Why don't you come down and swim with us, Alice-san?' I shook my head regretfully.

'I can't swim.'

'Aww…' She made a face. 'That's a pity. But you can still join us from there, don't worry!' I nodded and smiled.

'I feel included already, Kumiko-san.' She raised her eyebrows.

'So formal! Ah well, they say you're like that.' She shrugged and suddenly got a mischievous look on her face. She beckoned to a few of her friends and they laughed. My eyes narrowed at them and they looked at me and giggled (a most unusual reaction).

Then they all simultaneously kicked water towards my chair. I looked with wide eyes at the perpetual wall of water.

Heck, it could Yamamoto's water barriers!

Response was automatic. With a burst of speed, my (trained with years) reflexes kicked in, jumping over the chair with one hand and landing behind it so it could shield me from getting wet.

Then I peeked over the edge when the last water droplets landed. I pouted. The back of my shirt got wet.

They were staring at me.

'That…' I looked quizzically at her. 'Was so cool, Alice-chan! She went, hurdle! Water wave! Shoom!' She jumped up and did an imitation of me with sound-effects. I stared at them.

They didn't fall down and worship me? Like the stupid fan-boys? I looked up at the sky with happy tears streaming down my face.

FINALLY!

I inner rejoiced until one of the girls in the pool yelled 'Crap!'

A teacher who was just passing by backtracked and frowned in the general pool direction.

'Mind your language, girls.'

'Yes.' We all said with rolled eyes (I liked this group) and we all sat still until the teacher went away. And then they all jumped out of the pool.

'Dinner's in ten minutes! I have to shower!'

'No, me first!'

'No way!' The two people in question raced down the pathway, sandal flip-flopping sounds getting farther and farther away. I started walking towards my cabin as well, as Kyoko was currently occupied.

I enjoyed the sunset, chill breeze winding through my baggy long sleeves. Which reminds me I should change to non-wet clothes. I entered the cabin after a short war with the lock (where, I was glad to say, I won) and pulled a light grey long sleeved baggy t-shirt and pulled it on after taking off my dark-grey long sleeved baggy t-shirt.

Hehe… I chuckled. I couldn't believe how much I had come to like grey, as much as I hated it before.

Kyoko burst in a little out of breath.

'Oh, I need a quick shower!'

'Yes you do. I can smell the chlorine from here.' Kyoko threw me a _look_ and went into the shower.

'Ah, too hot!' I smiled to myself and walked out the door, bumping into a thoroughly exhausted Setsuna and Hana.

'Kyoko's showering.' I told her. Hana cursed.

'Damn.'

'What got you so muddy?' I asked Setsuna.

'Ehehe… We kinda got lost.'

'And who's fault was that?' Hana snapped irritably.

'Hey, I was just holding the map! I never said I could read it!' Hana turned around and sighed.

'I'm surrounded by directionally challenged idiots…' She muttered to herself. Setsuna smiled brightly at me, glasses reflecting light showing all the smears it accumulated.

'Hana-chan was the one who rescued us back there!' I applauded Hana.

'I'm impressed you stood out Setsuna that long.'

'Me too.'

'Hey!' Setsuna indignantly protested as me and Hana comforted each other in smug silence. A bright voice on the other side of the door chirped happily.

'Done! Eh, where did Alice-chan go?' Hana immediately brightened up and whooshed through the door and apparently, into the shower.

'Kyoko, get some new clothes for me.' The muffled echo-y voice of Hana came through the bathroom door. Setsuna stamped her foot in the most childish way I've ever seen her be. She must have been at the end of her tether too.

'No fair!' I chuckled at her and patted her on the shoulder consolingly.

'Maybe you can borrow a shower or something…' I said, not really thinking. Setsuna brightened.

'Oh yeah!' Then she proceeded banging on doors until one said that she could use their shower. I just shook my head (feeling thoroughly old) and slowly shuffled down a well vegetated path (insect-repellent rules) appreciating nature.

It was the end of the third day. Another half a day and I would be back with Grey and his excellent cooking (when he was up to it. We mostly ordered room service).

Stepping into the hall, a crowd was already there getting ready to congregate to the dinner hall. I grinned as I spotted a nice-looking padded chair. I sank into it, grinning at the softness. Ah, I feel old. (Really. I'm serious.)

Dinner was chicken or beef with vegetable stir fry (urgh, I hate vegetables) and gravy (for the beef). Then ice-cream, where I mixed chocolate and strawberry sauces together making Setsuna make _the face (_the one she makes when she seriously doubts something.)

She'd barged in nearly in the middle of the dinner with the other late people. So they got all the scraps. I laughed evilly.

It was retribution for any future deeds they would do to me. Wait, that doesn't make sense.

Oh well. Laughing evilly was fun.

But hey… why were those people edging away?

Demolishing dinner was easy, night activity was horrifying.

It all started with one simple sentence.

'Tonight's night activity is…'

Ishimaru-sensei paused for dramatic effect. The students just stared at him. Maybe he was waiting for the bated breath or something.

'Is!'

Still bored eyes. He sighed and gave up on trying to get the dramatic pause. Then he suddenly revived and threw up his arms, shouting,

'Bush-dancing!'

We all stared at him incredulously. A student screamed in horror. The atmosphere instantly became dark. The girls looked at the boys in mistrust. My mind went blank.

_What?_

* * *

**Sorry for the lateness! ^^ The sugar high has worn off. But! I still hope you liked the chapter and review. If you didn't like it, please tell me why and I will try and… fix it? XD**

**See you all next time!**


	10. With some dancing in tow

**It's late. Blame school. TT_TT IT'S OUT TO KILL ME!**

**Sorry though. Really. I didn't mean for it to be late. So there's an extra at the end. And to answer a question; yes, there will be other views in this story. ^^ It's longer too! I hope you enjoy this!**

* * *

I froze.

Bush-dancing. The nightmare of all students with crackpot teachers who think _bush-dancing_ would be enjoyed by their dear students.

How could anyone like bush dancing? As we all filed slowly into the communal hall (some girls blubbering while some boys marched robotically towards the imminent doom called embarrassment) I sighed. If I couldn't escape bush-dancing in primary school in my previous life, why would I think I could escape bush-dancing in _this_ life?

And to think that when I happily entered high-school with Amanda by my side, I thought I had escaped bush-dancing for sure. And to add to that irony, I had to do bush-dancing even in death. I shook my head.

Better make sure Tsuna wouldn't die from tripping over his feet and banging his head on an oh-so-conspicuously placed chair or something.

'Line up!' Mizuki-sensei sensei (a lovely teacher really, young and full of energy) cried out happily. We did so, but unfortunately the fan-boys had to wake up just then and realise that if they ran fast enough, they might get their Innocent Flower as their partner.

And oh, don't forget me.

Blegh. _Charismatic Enigma._ I still can't get over it.

And so, to protect my pretty self (ha, pretty!) and to keep with my mission, I glared at all of them before placing my eyes on Yamamoto.

'Partner, Yamamoto?' Yamamoto laughed and scratched the back of his head.

'Now, now, what's with the glaring?' he said as he casually walked over to me. Ignoring the fan-boy glares in true Yamamoto fashion, or just not noticing, he stood in front of me cluelessly.

'What do we do now?'

'I don't know. Wait for the others to partner up, I guess.' I shrugged out in response. Then I heard a scream from my left (a boyish scream too) and we both swivelled my necks to the noise.

And to our surprise, Maeda Yanushita was being mobbed by girls. And as recording down what he was screaming out would leave half-censored sentences and eyes bleeding (how he learnt those words, I would never know), I will skip that part and fast forward to where the teacher waded through the screaming mass of girls (it was like looking at a sold out ticket concert) and admonished him on his language.

Loudly.

After _that_ was sorted out, he loudly proclaimed Setsuna as his partner and then... they left him alone. Just like that. And they didn't mob Setsuna with evil glares either.

I wonder why. Wish all those stupid fan-boys did that for me.

Maeda half ran, half scampered towards Setsuna, who was next to me and breathed out a thank god.

I glared at him for his language from before.

It gave me a headache. Seriously. Fan-boy screams were all and fine, but add fan-girl screams, half-shouted swearing, and then loud teacher admonishes with some agonised screams from fan-girls as they realised he had a partner was just _too much_.

I wonder why I'm getting so many headaches lately.

But then I realised where I was and promptly banged my head against a helpfully placed wall.

Setsuna and Yamamoto looked weirdly at me.

'Hey, what are you doing?' Setsuna asked me, still with that weird look on her face.

'Eh, punishing myself for asking a stupid question to myself.' Yamamoto laughed. As per usual. I kind of wish Gokudera was here so he could call him baseball freak and spark one of those one sided arguments. They were funny.

The other students paired up (with Kyoko's side finally being sorted out by Hana's helpful fists of annoyance) and Mizuki-sensei beamed out happy beams again and continued her monologue.

'Syuuke-sensei and I will now demonstrate the first bush-dance, heel and toe!'

Then they did this awkward demonstration and then they put the two lines (one boy one girl) together to make a circle and said the dreadful words.

'Let the dance begin!' said that annoyingly happy voice that pierced my eardrums and made my headache _that much _worse. Then... the fiddle music began.

It was _that_ type of old folk music, it would be happy and cheerful and bouncy if the recording wasn't so ancient, the qualities so bad, the instrument seeming so out of tune, the speakers so crappy... (Okay, it wasn't that bad. I was just in a bad mood. Can't blame me) and grimacing, Yamamoto and I held hands and did the awkward shuffle required for the dance.

An awkward shuffle was to be expected. This was the age where cooties were still firmly believed in. The age where feelings were just "starting to blossom". (Why couldn't the fan-boys believed I had cooties? But then, they were boys and only boys had cooties…)

Immediately, the annoying fiddle music stopped.

'Now what was that? More bounce, more skip, you're young, use your SPIRIT!' We stared at Mizuki-sensei blankly, and as if she had been learning from Yamamoto, she ignored it with a smile and grinned even bigger, showing all her teeth.

She looked like a shark.

'Now, shall we try again?'

She rewinded the old style tape and the starting chord filled the air with its scratchy that seemed to scratch the air.

'Now say it with me~! Heel, toe, heel, toe, SLIDE SLIDE SLIDE SLIDE!' There were non-committal grumbles. She frowned. 'MORE ENTHUSIASM! OR WE'LL REPEAT THIS!'

The magic words. We all immediately screamed the words with her, including me.

'!' We all screamed. Because we were all screaming all different times, it all sounded like an unending sentence.

And through it all, Mizuki-sensei smiled triumphantly.

She was nice. Really. I liked her classes, stopped me from getting too bored from learning Grade Six stuff again. But… please notice I used _was_ in that sentence. She _was_ nice. But in bush-dancing, she was like a certain baby Hitman tutor.

After the heel and toe, I was with a random person. I forgot how many times we had done the heel and toe, but the partner swapping had gotten Yamamoto on the other side of the room.

I looked down at my partner. He looked elated to touch my hands for an extended period of time. People I had dubbed as _hard-core fan boys_ glared at him. I grinned at them, just to tease them.

They immediately blushed from head to toe.

I suddenly felt guilty.

And I didn't know why.

Anyway, Mizuki-sensei had already popped another rustic looking tape into the player.

'Let's do this! This dance doesn't need a partner!' The partner I had with me sent a disappointed glance at my hands and let go. I looked at Kyoko, sure that she would've gotten, I dunno, at least ruffled a bit.

But I saw her partner and grinned, as Tsuna immediately let her hands go, his face beet red. I smirked. If he blushed like that all the time, he might faint, and that won't go too well with my mission now, will it?

But anyway, I moved over to Setsuna, still smirking. Setsuna took one look at my face and did a dramatic eye-sweep over the crowd with her hand over her eyes.

'Who's being bullied?' I scowled at her.

'You know I don't do that.' She grinned at me.

'I love teasing you! You have the most adorable reactions.' I glared at her even harder. Adorable? _Adorable?_

…These eyes were supposed to intimidate right? Why wasn't it working on the grinning, glasses-wearing person right in front of me?

Setsuna grabbed my hand and shoved through the crowd, going towards Kyoko, and coincidentally, Tsuna. Fine with me, I mentally shrugged.

'Kyoko-chan!' Kyoko's eyes lit up from a conversation from a random boy. It was obvious to me that she thought it wasn't that interesting (though her smile didn't show it) and her relief at seeing Setsuna only reinforced the impression.

'Setsuna-chan! Alice-chan!' Setsuna immediately let go of my hand and went to Kyoko to chat while the boy drifted away and started talking to another boy, probably a friend. Left behind (Kyoko and Setsuna can talk unbearably fast. I couldn't form Japanese words that fast yet. That was partly the reason I talked slow. But _nooo_, of _course_ the fan-boys didn't see it as me not being able to speak Japanese well. _They_ made it out like I was laid-back or something. And then somehow... it spread around, so I'm now the laid-back Charismatic Enigma.) I talked to Tsuna absent-mindedly.

'So we're the third wheels?'

And because there was no response, I looked over to Tsuna to see Tsuna enraptured with Kyoko's laugh. I shrugged to myself.

'So I'm the third wheel.' I said to myself, leaning against another conveniently placed wall. Mizuki-sensei called to us.

'Ok, these are the steps to the Nutbush! Students please watch carefully!'

I carefully pried myself from the wall and walked towards Syuuke-sensei.

'I need to go toilet!' I exclaimed with a pained expression. He looked at me and waved a hand.

'Go.'

And so I went out the door into the refreshingly cool night air. Then remembering the insect repellent in one of my numerous pockets, I put some on, eyeing the air around me for mosquitoes that would try to get a suck before I could get the insect repellent all on.

After the insect-repellent, I inwardly giggled evilly. My acting wasn't so bad, really…

I wandered around the paths aimlessly, my eyes adjusting the dark slowly but surely. And it was then that I noticed a flash, a movement. I immediately tensed.

Jack, Spartan Teacher No. One had always told me this: Abnormally fast movements were not common. Why would normal people move so fast? _How_ would normal people move so fast? Fast-movers were suspicious. It means that the person doing it always had something they had to do.

Nearly always it was something suspicious they had to do.

I put on my sunglasses, making me half-blind yes, but also nearly undetectable. My eyes were the only thing that anchored me to this reality, the only thing that made people notice me. Without the eyes, my body was practically undetectable, a ghost…

_An empty shell _my brain grimly thought out and I pushed it away, not wanting to face that and remembered what direction the movement moved towards. Then I walked that way slowly, and relied on hearing.

My hearing adjusted, just like my eyes. I heard trees rustling, wing blowing, the little pitter patter of animal feet, a stray cat's meow, whispers.

I honed in on the whispers. My ears told me they were up. So I looked up, going to the edge of the road to get closer.

'I heard a rumour that a candidate for the tenth Vongola boss is here.'

'Are you sure, Red? We are acting on vague mission details.'

'Can't be wrong. Sightings of a Brighteye around a certain school. It was confirmed after awhile that one of her classmates had ties to the Vongola. His father is Iemitsu.'

'_The _Iemitsu Sawada?'

'Yes. His son is the second strongest candidate after Xanxus.'

'But _that _incident…'

'Don't care about that. We are the only reconnaissance who knows, this is a top secret only we and the top boss know. They said if our reconnaissance was proved positive, we would need to remove him immediately.'

'So that's why you wanted us to stalk that wimpy guy and that rich girl! But why would you know? Are the Brighteyes really that important?' I edged closer, wanting to hear more clearly.

'Are you living under a rock, Mauve? They are the top of the top, the elite. They specialise in information gathering, and I heard a rumour that they can hide their presence so well that even security cameras powered with _flames_ couldn't catch them!' Red, I presumed, said in a harsh whisper.

'That's amazing… But why would you know if a Brighteye was here that something special was here?' The faint outline of Red behind my sunglasses shook his head.

'I only said Brighteyes only _specialised_ in information. They dabble in other stuff too. And there's this thing. When a Brighteye turns twelve, they go on a special mission, a mission just their own. Every single mission they have done outside information gathering has been big.'

'How big?'

'Last huge one was the Bovino war incident. A Brighteye with deep red eyes, rumoured to look pink, at that time dabbled in Bovino affairs. Rumour is that she spoke three words to the opposing family. They backed away immediately. And the war was averted.'

'That's amazing…'

'Brighteyes don't loiter, so when they _do _seemingly loiter, something big is going to happen. And it did. Vongola tenth candidate right there next to her.'

'But he's just a wimpy kid!'

'Don't get tricked by appearances. We strike at night, when everyone's sleeping, got it?'

'Yes.' Mauve said in a professional tone.

Seeing I couldn't leech more information off them anymore, I took off my sunglasses. Red immediately looked down and looked alarmed to see me there.

'Brighteye…' He hissed. I grinned at him, showing my teeth. Then I widened my eyes. He shrunk back a bit.

'Hello. A nice bit of information you got there, isn't it?' Red narrowed his eyes at me. He was young, sixteen at most, but he had the look of a professional.

'So the rumour of an undetectable presence was real…'

'Yes. Oh, and Mauve?' He looked at me. He couldn't have been fourteen. He didn't look professional at all. Maybe it was his first assassination. I noticed, with sharp eyes, they looked similar. I continued in a conversational tone. 'Can't let you go harming my charge. Sorry, got to stop it here.'

Red's eyes immediately narrowed and threw a needle at me. I smirked and dodged pretty easily.

Adrenaline was rushing, it seemed.

'Needles? A bit old fashioned, but whatever.' Red, keeping his eyes on me, said to Mauve.

'Brighteyes use the weirdest things as weapons. But they are good. She can attack you with something that doesn't look like a weapon. Be cautious.'

I smiled genially, holding my hands out. 'Hey, don't be so suspicious. I don't have any weapons on me.' Mauve looked confused, while Red still looked on with hard eyes. 'But of course, I got to protect my charge from impending attacks. I can think of so many ways to defeat you.'

I was bluffing of course.

'But I know that _this_ one will work just fine.' I smiled. Then I opened my mouth, and _screamed._

Oh, was my scream loud. It pierced the air, sliced through the silence and startled every living thing in a thirty metre radius. Red recovering first cursed and glared at me.

'It's a benefit of looking twelve. Adults listen to you and not suspicious boys. It helps I'm a girl, of course.' I said offhandedly. Red only continued to glare.

Sounds were starting to come from the right. I kept smiling.

'And besides, shouldn't you thank me?' Red seemed to think of ignoring me and turning away to leave with a Mauve that was still slightly disorientated.

'For what?'

'Saving your brother's innocence.' Red's eyes widened slightly.

'How…' Then he smiled lopsidedly. Mauve was still rubbing his ears, he didn't hear what Red and I said. To his defence, I really did have quite a piercing scream. 'Of course, Brighteyes know everything. How could I forget?'

I smiled at him, genuine now. They were trying to kill Tsuna. But they weren't bad. Although Red was professional, I had a feeling he was not really frozen. Not yet.

'Not all knowing. Just good observation.' I tapped the corner of my eyes. 'Now go. I don't like harming people. I'll just guard Tsuna tonight. I don't want to lose _my_ innocence over a tiny little thing like this. I bet this isn't even that important is it?'

The noises were getting louder. Voices were distinguishable now.

'I would ask how you knew, but I think I won't get an answer.'

'To the contrary, I will tell. They won't send an unexperienced person,' I nodded at Mauve, 'to an important mission now, would they? It was just confidential because not many people knew about Tsuna. Now shoo. Or you'll _really_ be caught.'

The two shot me a look. And they flitted into the darkness just as the little group came in response to my scream.

'What happened?' A concerned looking teacher I didn't know said to me. I let my eyes water, putting my hands up to wipe away crocodile tears.

'I got lost, and I was wandering around and then I saw a _cockroach…'_ I wailed out, sobbing my little heart out. The teachers breathed a sigh of relief that it was only _that_ and gently led me back to the cabins, not suspecting anything much from a twelve year old.

'Now, don't cry now… Do you like chocolate? Let's get you some chocolate when we get back to our cabins, ok?'

I smirked.

I just realised why the camp had been strangely monotonous.

Because it had been _normal._ And because _normal _can never exist…

* * *

**Jack's view**

His sister had died.

He didn't know what to do. He only looked at his big sister in that glass case, looking peaceful when she obviously was not.

It had taken a little time to organise the funeral. When nobody was looking, Alice seemed to have filled in a form for becoming an organ donor just in case they died in an accident. He nearly laughed when he heard. It was just like Alice. But the funeral was here now, and here he was, dressed in black clothes and staring.

He had been in denial. He could admit to that. Turned his back on his sister's side of the room, avoiding the dinner table where they had eaten together, convinced himself that she was just on a very long trip.

_A trip that she would never come back from…_

He now missed her voice. She always had a soft voice, she wasn't a loud person. But her sense of sarcasm always hid that. With that, she could always make him laugh. Laugh and laugh until he forgot the thing that he had been upset about, and she would smile too, before delving into complicated science books, lying on the bed, stomach down, legs kicking.

It was stuffy in the room, he noticed. Aunts he didn't know he had, blank-faced cousins greeting him, giving him condolences, saying goodbye, all with that tone, the tone used for sick people, for the sad, _for_ _the grieving…_

Grey hair was neatly splayed on a white pillow. It was a dark grey, like clouds on a stormy night. Alice had always said she hated that hair. But he loved it, how both Alice and his dad (the two most important people in his life) had grey hair. He wished he had it too, to share a trait with them, the two most important, two most shining people to him.

Where people found normality, he found stars. With real stars, he could only watch them sparkle, twinkling high in the sky, ever there but strangely remote, and so far away. But _his_ two stars weren't like that. They dim compared to the sun and moon, but they were there, close and comforting.

But one of his precious stars had died with a car screech and another was fading fast. His dad seemed to falter without her, the other twinkle in a field of bright suns and shining moons.

His own black hair combed back and stuck into place with gel, he looked on. Tears didn't seem to be able to spring from his eyes, they remained stubbornly dry. He felt so horrible. He couldn't even cry at his sister's funeral.

The words, those wise words. That one, about loss, and how being away makes a person go fonder or something. But it wasn't fonder. It was loss all the way through.

He was sure that the whole family felt it, that cavern in the family, that huge gap. Even Emily. What made it worse was her walking around asking where "Awice" was.

It was strange, it was when they were gone that people start to think of the good things they had done. How irreplaceable they were. Alice had been so integrated into the family that it was just accepted. He had been annoyed with her many times, and when she was alive he remembered all the bad things. But now, it was like a house with its roof torn off. And the house just cannot help but notice, and feel it.

A person called his name. He turned around, letting the image of his sister in that box, in that horribly cold box, slide from his view. He felt he was underwater; his movements slow and lethargic while the world wizzed by, not feeling the amazing light that suddenly died.

He had always been close to his sister, he guessed. She was the only one he could cling to, after all, when he was a little kid of three and both their parents were away. And they both grew up, growing closer and farther in different ways. He wouldn't call her for little things that would alarm him when he was little like running out of toilet paper. But she was the one he crawled to after a bad nightmare.

He couldn't do that again.

Never again.

* * *

'_Alice!'_

'_Yeah?' Alice looked at him with an annoyed look, flicking the page of a thick-looking book absentmindedly._

'_We read about death today…'_

'_So?'_

'_Does death really mean that they get separated from each other forever?'_

_Alice didn't need him to clarify what _they_ meant. She was like that. She sighed._

'_No, I don't think so. I mean, if we're all good, then they would meet in Heaven again, right?'_

'_You won't leave right?' He suddenly asked, irrational thought suddenly coming into childish thought processes. Alice laughed._

'_Of course not.'_

* * *

His mother was heading towards the glass box, carrying something bright, a splash of colour in the whites and blacks and greys that had pervaded this room, his world.

Sunflowers.

She had always liked sunflowers. Said they were always bright and smiling. Remembered how he laughed at her, saying how can flowers _smile? _And then _she_ smiled at him. A smile that he wouldn't see again. He watched as his mother tenderly put the one single yellow sunflower in front of her, into the cold glass box.

With that, he couldn't help it. A gulp came up his throat, then a little cough and suddenly, his cheeks were streaming with tears.

And he cried, loudly, expecting warm arms to come around him, long grey hair obscuring his vision.

But it didn't happen. Because she wasn't there anymore. Because she could never be _here_ anymore.

So he cried, cried and cried for things lost, regretted, and _her._

His dear, dear sister.


	11. She helped a little girl and her dad

**I'm one week late! Bad author, bad. *whacks self on head* I've been trying to upload this since Sunday (this/last week, yeah, I know, one week late *bashes head onwall*) but it doesn't let me into the place where I can actually place my chapter in. I don't know when they're going to fix it, but the chapter will appear the day I can access that part of my account. Apparently, it's been happening to other fandoms as well... X( Anyone knows what happened?**

**But anyway, please enjoy this slightly longer chapter.**

**And since I haven't done this (not that I remember anyway, and this stands for the rest of the story): **

**I obviously do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Duh.**

* * *

Camp was fun. Kind of. Except for the Red and Mauve thingy. And being mauled by my fan club. I still remember being swamped.

'_Oh Alice-sama!' (Sama? I remember asking myself when they started calling me freaking _sama_)._

'_Are you okay?'_

'_Are you hurt?'_

'_I wish I was there to protect you!'_

'_Yeah, her knight in shining armour!'_

'_But are you really okay?'_

'_I hope so; I can't see any visible injuries...' _

'_Oh no, she's been crying!' _

And the nightmare went on. The teachers didn't even try to help; they were appreciating "the lovely concerned friends that Bright had."

Heh. Evil teachers.

Bus trip home was spent on gorging the sweets that Grey had packed for that purpose only (got to love him) with Setsuna. I swear I was going to get cavities this time round.

And of course, school next day (after being fussed over by Grey. I had missed him) the teacher gave the announcement that pronounced doom on many students.

'End of school exams next week!' Sensei cried out joyfully to all the students.

And considering it was Friday… well, cue collective groan and slump onto desks. Then it was free study session.

It was okay really (for me), since I didn't think elementary stuff was hard. I was sitting in my seat looking out the window when Setsuna stumbled over to me.

'Alice-chan! I really _really_ don't get this!' She pointed to a question. I smiled and pointed to a chair. She dragged her chair over and I explained it patiently.

'Well, to divide this, you have to…' After a short one minute explanation, Setsuna nodded.

'Oh, I get this!' I smiled at her.

'See? Easy.'

'Yeah, you're really smart, Alice-chan!' I waved a hand.

'No, I just got a head start.' She looked at me quizzically until another student came fidgeting nervously behind me.

_Not another love letter…_

I turned around with a scowl on my face until I realised this time, the culprit was actually a _girl._ Ashiwara Miwa. Who had a crush on Yamada Zenmaru from class B.

'Yes?' I moulded my face into something vaguely resembling a smile.

'I… I heard you were very good at explaining things, Alice-san, and I wondered if you could explain this for me?' She said softly, shyly twiddling her fingers.

I hadn't approached her (she was one of the okay girls in the class) because she was shy and I permanently had a scowl on my face because of fan boys (yes, even I realised by now). I mean, scowls and shy people don't mix. But she was actually approaching me?

'Sure!' I beamed at her and Setsuna dragged another chair over. She sat down and placed her book in front of me.

'I just had a problem with this one…' She pointed to the question.

'Hmm… In this one, you have to do this first or…' She listened attentively and silently, which was opposite to Setsuna who although attentive, also had a bad habit of tapping her fingers or kick the table when she was concentrating.

'Thank you, Alice-san!' She said happily when I finished. I grinned.

'Well, it wasn't that hard. What Middle school do you want to go to?'

'Midori Middle.' I looked at her in surprise.

'Same as Setsuna!' They looked at each other and I grinned.

'Aren't you going to Midori, Alice-san?' I looked at Miwa.

'Well, I was planning to go to Namimori Middle.' Half the boys in the class swivelled at that and stared.

'I thought she was going to Midori and gave up!'

'I'm so glad Alice-sama is going to a co-ed Middle school!' One of the boys cried in happiness. I scowled and twitched.

'But why aren't you going to Midori, Alice-chan? You're so smart, you'd get in easily!' Setsuna asked, yet again.

'Don't want to. Midori is prestigious and an all girl's school, but Namimori isn't bad either. It's actually in the top fifty.'

'But Midori is in top ten!'

'Heh. Being so high on the charts mean lots more work.' Setsuna sighed. Miwa laughed softly.

'You're not as scary as I thought you were, Alice-san.' She said quietly. I smirked at her.

'That's what she said.' I jerked a thumb at Setsuna. They shared at look again and laughed. I think they would be good friends.

Though, as I went through another question with Setsuna with Miwa looking on, I wonder how Tsuna got into Nanimori Middle since it was so high on the charts. Setsuna interrupted my explanation half way through the question. I raised an eyebrow at her.

'Alice-chan!' She said loudly, as if she just thought of it. 'Wouldn't you get lonely if you're going to Namimori Middle?' I smiled at her.

'No, Kyoko-chan and Hana-chan are going to Namimori Middle too.'

And guess what, the half of the boys that didn't swivel at my comment on _me _going to Namimori Middle swivelled at _Kyoko _going.

'Kyoko-chan!'

'Going to Namimori! I need to study harder then!'

'Yosh! Study like crazy to go to Namimori!'

I sighed and banged my head on the table. Miwa looked at me concerned, but Setsuna waved the concern away.

'She's always like that, don't worry.' I glared at her, and this time she didn't react one bit. I huffed. I wish my yellow eyes worked on her still.

I watched in the corner of my eye (Miwa and Setsuna were talking, only Setsuna was doing most of the talking and Miwa was smiling) as Tsuna blinked, still processing the fact that Kyoko was going to Namimori Middle.

Then he reached for the Math textbooks in front of him with a determined frown on his face.

I smiled inwardly and looked out the window.

* * *

Study sessions went on crazily from then on. Miwa joined our group quite easily (her saying that she didn't really have friends, but usually tagged along with a group nonetheless), with her being the shy, quiet, thoughtful one, Setsuna being the hyperactive, blab all over the place nerd, and me the scowling, blunt logic and explain stuff one.

Our study sessions once went on for so long that Miwa invited us to her house. She had a house, so Setsuna groaned and asked the sky why she was the poorest one out of all of us. Miwa shot me a gentle concerned look at me while I shrugged and took out a high tech phone (Miwa's eyes goggled at it) and called Grey that I was going on study session.

He said that he would leave dinner in the fridge then.

Miwa's parents were nice (her dad was the over the top happy type, her mother being the order of the family and her older brother the overprotective type. Seriously, when he heard Miwa had friends over, he stormed down to see if we were guys or not).

We stopped at around eight, with her dad cooing over my eyes.

'What pretty eyes! I've never seen such a pretty natural yellow in anyone's eyes before!' Miwa's mother whapped him on the back of his head.

'Stop hovering over her.' Then she smiled at me and Setsuna. 'It's nice to see Miwa finally deciding to bring you two over. Miwa didn't have many friends before, so when she met you two, she wouldn't stop talking about you!'

Miwa blushed really hard at this while I smiled.

'We like being Miwa's friend too.' Setsuna nodded really fast and hugged her.

'Yeah! Alice-chan isn't as nice as Miwa-chan!' Her dad laughed and joined the hug.

'My darling Miwa is finally growing up!' Miwa's face was so red that I wondered why she wasn't fainting.

'So are you all trying to get into Midori?' Miwa shook her head and pointed towards me, saying softly

'Alice-chan,' she said with a slight smile (I had upgraded to _chan_ after saying _san_ wasn't what friends called each other, though I just called her Miwa) 'is going to Nanimori Middle.' Her brother who had been hugging her tightly squealing over her cuteness looked at me and smirked.

'Too stupid for Midori?' His mother and father immediately whapped him on the head.

'She's a _guest!'_ Setsuna was affronted for me.

'Alice-chan is the smartest in the whole _grade!_ When the teacher once gave us middle school papers, she got a one hundred percent!'

Miwa's brother gaped at me comically. Miwa herself looked at me in surprise. I shrugged at her. She smiled a bit at me (Miwa was just cute like that. And she was _really _cute, believe me).

'_I'm in middle school and I don't get one hundreds…' _I heard a grumble. I smirked.

'Do you want me to tutor you?' I said in my most annoying polite voice. He looked into my eyes straight on for the first time (I'm impressed by that, even Setsuna needed a few weeks to do that) and said a flat out no.

'Actually,' her mother said, 'if what you said is true, Kashino, aren't you struggling with your maths? Let's see if Bright-san can help you.' He looked at his mother and stomped out of the room, and grumbled all the way upstairs.

'Oh no, Ashiwara-san, please call me Alice.' She beamed at me.

'Then you have to call me Akari.'

'Oh no, I couldn't…' I dithered.

'Then you have to call me Akira!' Akira (Miwa's father) called out from the kitchen.

'Okay!' Setsuna said brightly. Akari beamed. Akari and Akira huh? Nice names. I smirked a bit when Miwa's brother came back.

'And what's his name again?' I asked in a whisper to Miwa. She leaned towards to continue the whisper conversation.

'His name's Kashino.'

'Thanks.'

'And what year is he in?'

'He's in his second year Middle school already.'

'Thanks again.'

'No problem.' She grinned at me. So Kashino sat down grumpily and opened the textbook to a page.

'I'm actually in the top half of my class, but I don't understand this theory so I get bad marks in real tests.' He admitted grudgingly. His mother tutted in the other room.

'Excuses!'

'Shut up mom!' He coughed and continued. 'So if you think, an elementary schooler, be able to teach this to me, I will allow you to continue being friends with Miwa.'

Miwa spluttered indignantly.

'Whenever did I need your permission to have friends?' She said with a raised voice (first time, really) He whined at her.

'But Miwa, maybe she has an older brother that would want to harass you!'

They bickered (with Miwa being more soft-spoken, but still) friendlily. It was this type of time that I missed my little brother the most.

'I… am an only child.' _In this world, _I added to myself.

'See, brother? She's an _only child.'_ He snorted.

'Well, explain this to me.' He turned to me having obviously lost the argument. I saw Setsuna and Miwa high-fiving each other. I looked over the equation and raised an eyebrow.

'I'll explain this concept so easy that even _idiots_ can understand.' I told him. He scowled.

'Are you implying I'm an idiot?'

'No, I blatantly stared at you while saying idiot.' We glared at each other for a bit (he didn't flinch at my eyes, still!) and I settled down more comfortably on my cushion.

'Come here, Setsuna, Miwa. Might as well try and have you two understand it as well.' They leaned closer, and I got a pencil and a sheet of lose working paper.

'Now, to do this equation, it's easiest to understand by drawing a graph first. So here…' I drew a graph and started filling it in and explaining as I went. At the end, Kashino was nodding.

'I understand now.' He grumbled. 'You're actually not bad.'

'Of course. I'm a certified child genius.' Setsuna and Miwa stared at me.

'_Really?'_ I laughed at their expressions.

'No. I've never done an IQ test before, so I wouldn't know.'

'You should do one, maybe you really are a child genius!'

'Nah, I just got a head start.' Setsuna gave me a puzzled look again before looking at her watch.

'Aah! I'm late! I promised my mom I would go back before eight thirty!' Akari looked at us from the dining room.

'Do you want to join us for dinner? It's fine, really, both of you.' We both shook our heads.

'No, my mom's already cooked dinner for me.'

'Sorry.' I didn't bother to give an excuse but shaking my head ruefully while smiling.

'It's okay.' She said disappointedly. 'But would you two want to join us next Thursday?'

And with that, a tradition was established.

Setsuna looked at her watch worriedly. 'I live over the next way. But it's too late to walk over there.' Before Akari or Akira could offer to drive her (because it was evident in their faces they wanted to offer), I snapped my phone shut and smiled at her.

'My butler will drive you home. Your house is on the way to my place anyway.' Miwa's family gaped at me.

'B-b-butler?' Miwa spluttered.

'Yes, butler.' I said placidly.

'So you're rich, Alice-chan?'

'Yeah.'

'Like, how rich?'

'Umm… lessee…' I mumbled to myself. 'Quite rich.' I said truthfully.

'Like, millionaire rich?' I shook my head and they breathed a sigh of relief. Then the doorbell rang and Akari went to get the door.

'I have come to fetch the young Miss.' I walked over.

'Hi, Grey.'

'Miss.' He nodded at me. Then he nodded at Miwa's family. 'Thank you for taking care of the young miss.' They nodded dumbly. I grinned at Akari.

'Bye, Akari-san, Akira-san, Miwa-chan, Idiot-san!' I said brightly. Akira recovered first and did a big hearted chuckle.

'Idiot-san! Like that eh, Kashino?' He nudged Kashino with a genuine grin. He scowled at him and kept staring at Grey.

'Setsuna-chan, come on. We'll be seeing you soon, Miwa-chan!' She nodded, she still shocked by an actual _butler_ and I marched Setsuna out the door into the car. She stared at the high class leather and little buttons in wonder.

'I can't believe I'm sitting in one of these…' I smiled at her.

'You like this type of stuff?' She nodded really fast, her glasses nearly falling off her face.

'Are you really not millionaire rich, Alice-chan?' She said while staring at the little lights that switched on and off when she touched a button. I chuckled humourlessly and stared out the window. Dark houses streamed past one by one, all seeming to have empty lit up windows.

'No, I'm billionaire rich.' I said matter-of-factly. She stared at me. 'I didn't say so in front of Miwa-chan and others because they didn't seem up to it.' Setsuna gasped and was just about to say something until she caught sight of my face.

'You don't like being rich, Alice?' She asked softly. I looked at her. This was the first time she called me Alice.

'No, I think it's okay.' I lied. It was dark, and her glasses hid her expression well. Then I smiled at her. 'But if you like this type of stuff…' I looked at Grey.

'Grey!'

'Yes, Miss?'

'Next time we go to Miwa-chan's house and you have to pick me up, use the limo.'

'Yes, Miss.' Setsuna gaped at me.

'You don't have to!' I shrugged.

'I want to. It's entirely for me.' Setsuna fumbled over her words for a moment until she was saved by the car stopping. We were in one of those shady districts, and the apartment building we stopped in front of, while not being bad, was definitely old and rusting. Setsuna seemed to blush at the building. I frowned.

'Setsuna, you're my best friend.' I said to her on a spur of the moment. She was half-way out the door by then, held open by Grey. 'Be proud of who you are.'

She looked at me for a long moment and smiled her usual bright smile.

'Sure, Alice.' I smiled at her as she completely slid out of the seat and Grey slid into his own driver's seat. We watched her as she went up to the building and entered it. Then we left, with only Grey and me on that old road.

I remember it was windy that night.

* * *

We reached the hotel. I decided to do the usual and go through the parking lot elevators when an arm on my elbow stopped me.

'Miss, someone's there.' I looked, and lo and behold there was a man standing there scanning the car park anxiously. I sighed.

'Well, Grey. It's better to only have one person than a whole mob, yeah?' I murmured to him as I stepped out of the car and walked towards the lift. Grey immediately closed the door and followed me closely. The man saw me and immediately started an awkward shuffle run that indicated that he wasn't used to running.

'Brighteye!' He huffed out as he reached me. Grey immediately stood in front of me. 'I don't mean harm!' He said desperately. 'I even stopped my bodyguards from coming with me to talk to you! Please listen to me!'

I looked under Grey's arm curiously. He actually seemed truly desperate. Then I realised who he was.

Yoshikuni Kyoya. He was the president of Yoshikuni industries, one of the leading technology companies of the age.

'Why have you come to me?' I asked him, slipping into the business voice Spartan Teacher No. Two told me to use while approaching potential clients. She told me that some may be deterred by my young age, so I should show maturity.

'My daughter has been kidnapped!' He burst out, as if waiting for such a question for a long time. And, looking at him, I think he had been waiting for awhile. 'She's only eight years old, and she disappeared this afternoon when she was…'

I stood stock still.

Eight years old. Little girl. A little girl with chubby cheeks flashed into my mind holding my shake-shake snow proudly.

_Emily… she would be eight by now, wouldn't she? Or does time move differently here and there?_

I stood a little straighter and nodded to Grey, who stood aside.

'I'll accept this case.' The man's eyes brightened.

'Really? He seemed truly relieved. 'I'll pay you as much money as you want, please get my little daughter back–' I cut him off.

'Yoshikuni-san,' he seemed surprised I knew who he was, 'we will continue our discussion upstairs in my room where things are secure and we can talk in detail.' He nodded.

'Of course. Can I bring one of my bodyguards?'

'Of course. Grey?' He nodded and stepped forward to the elevator, holding the card that would allow us entrance into level five of the hotel. We all stepped in, with Yoshikuni fidgeting quietly.

'Call the bodyguard you choose here.' He nodded and quickly snapped open a phone, saying some clipped hurried words into it. In two minutes, a man complete with sunglasses and a suit was standing next to him. I nodded to Grey again and we stepped into another elevator, this time holding the card that would lead us to the penthouse suite.

He didn't even spare a glance at the luxury (as expected of a billionaire) and went straight to business. Grey gently guided him to a sofa that overlooked the city.

'My daughter's name is Kumiko. Yoshikuni Kumiko.' He nodded to his bodyguard. He cleared his throat in a professional way.

'Kumiko-sama was dining in her room on the twenty-seventh floor when she went to the bathroom. After ten minutes we checked on her to see that she had disappeared. There were no sources to uncover there was a struggle, and the door was unlocked. The only window was too small to fit even Kumiko-sama in. There was no sound at all to indicate that Kumiko-sama was being taken away at all.'

I nodded at him.

'I'll see what I can do.' Yoshikuni seemed to open his mouth. 'Later. We'll talk about payment later too. Do you have a photo?' He nodded and took out his wallet, where he took out a family picture.

'The little girl in the photo is Kumiko. This was taken last year on Christmas.'

Kumiko was a cute child, with still disappearing baby fat on her cheeks and straight black hair. She was in traditional get up in that photo, in a small kimono and smiling happily at the camera.

'Thank you. I'll proceed now. Please help yourselves.' I indicated the huge room with the adjoining bathroom and kitchen. Then I moved into the computer room.

Spartan Teacher No. Two had apparently sent these to me one day at school saying I need fast access if I ever came onto a mission I wanted to do. And I guess, today would be the first time I would need to use it.

I switched it on, and it quickly popped up with the password sign. Password typed in, press enter, inside my information network. Inside the infamous Brighteye information network. I checked that the door was closed and switched off the lights and dimmed the screens. Then I switched on the air conditioning and started working.

'Yoshikuni Kumiko.' I typed in.

More than ten-thousand articles immediately popped up. No good. I restricted the search. Still no good. I scanned the photo and focused on Kumiko's face, then sent the image to the satellites and the search engines, supercomputers, anything really to see if anything matched.

Too many photos. Need to restrict.

I restricted the search to the last thirty hours.

And smirked in triumph at one slightly blurry Kumiko through a car window.

And it was easy going from there. The information network… _was amazing. _Only ten minutes and I was done.

I stepped out of the room, after securing the computer.

'I found your daughter, Yoshikuni-san.' He looked up from pacing the floor.

'Already?' He said incredulously. 'My teams have been searching for the last few hours!'

'Then dispatch one of those teams to this location.' I spread a map and drew a red circle on a petrol station. 'Under this petrol station is where your daughter is being held. You might want to draw authorities with this too, as this is only a small part of a big syndicate. If your teams go alone, it's too dangerous.'

I spread another piece of paper on the table.

'This is the blueprint of the layout of the base. This is approximately where your daughter is being held.' I drew a red circle over a small room. 'I don't know what they're planning to do, but you better take action fast. I have a bad feeling.' He looked up sharply at me and immediately turned towards his bodyguard. But his bodyguard was already on the phone and talking.

'Good bodyguard you have there.' Yoshikuni gave flustered thanks and stared at the red circles on the map.

'Better go down to the hotel lobby. You, that is. Police don't like listening to shady children. We'll talk about payment after you get your daughter back.'

He took both my hands and shook them vigorously, his face sincere.

'Thank you, Brighteye-san, thank you.' I shook my head.

'The pleasure was all mine, Yoshikuni-san. Now Grey will escort you down to the lobby with these,' I waved the pieces of paper, 'and get your daughter back. I'll visit you when you're done to get my payment.'

He nodded, and practically ran towards the elevators, with Grey and his bodyguard straight behind him. He nodded nervously at me once before the elevator doors closed.

I just smiled back and when the doors closed, I fell back onto the comfy sofa.

That was so nerve-wracking! Knowing a life was on your hands was so stressful! I shivered and looked out on the view.

Then I closed the windows.

The world was too dark, so dark, but I couldn't see the stars. I wandered down the hallway past Grey's room into mine.

And I collapsed onto the bed and slept. Tomorrow was Friday after all, with a huge maths and science test coming up. The rest of the subjects have already done.

I wonder if Kumiko was holding up… Yoshikuni seemed like a good father, anyhow. I heard Grey step into my room to check on me, tutted quietly on how I didn't change clothes before I went to bed and switched off the light. His light steps headed towards the kitchen, and I belatedly realised I hadn't eaten dinner yet.

Oh well. I was too tired, anyway.

**

* * *

**

I hoped you enjoyed that! ^^ Reborn's going to come real soon, haha! XD Looking forward to it anyway, with the whole gang there.

I had to introduce Alice as being an actual info gathering Brighteye somehow. Hope that was okay. XD


	12. But then the story starts

**Chapter is UP! YAAAAY!**

**It is late. I am sorry. Please read and enjoy. THANKS TO ALL MY READERS, LOVE YOU, AND REVIEWERS (love you even more, sorry just readers), and well, yeah.**

**You really can read the chapter now. It is really long as an apology (for future pairings, I have an idea but may still be swayed by people's opinions. Just tell me by review. That way, other people can see the majority too, haha. Though the ultimate decision still belongs to me. XD)**

* * *

I lounged on the couch watching Japanese television under direct air-conditioning. Grey was cleaning (even though I said the room service was exceptional, _he_ said that things just didn't look right when they did it. Ha, perfectionist).

I was _bored. _There was literally nothing to do in holidays between school years! And I had already gone to check if I had gotten into Nami-chu or not (of course I did) and went with Setsuna and Miwa to check if they had gotten into Midori (which, of course, they did as well. After all, I had taught them).

Flicking through random channels, the phone started ringing. Raising my eyebrows, I looked at Grey. I am not kidding when I say _no_ calls come for me, us, Grey, whatever. Grey just gave me a professional butler smile and practically glided towards the phone with professional butlery footsteps.

'Yes?' Grey paused for a bit and then replied. 'Oh, I'll have to ask Miss then.' I looked up from a comedy show which wasn't funny.

'What?'

'Liza-sama is calling you.'

'Huh? Liza?' I puzzled my brain a bit then I tilted my head back to look at Grey directly. 'Why?'

'She wants to tell you herself.' Grumbling a bit, I levered myself off the comfortable sofa I hadn't moved from for three hours (I'd become a couch potato. Oh the horror) and took the phone from Grey. Then I gave a disgruntled

'Yes?'

Liza's bouncy voice came from the other side. 'Hello Alice!'

I nearly laughed. I had been so used to being called "Arisu" by the Japanese people that hearing Alice by how it was supposed to be pronounced made me want to laugh.

Strange.

'Yeah?' I could practically hear Liza's pout.

'Alice! Is that how you greet a person as dear as your own sister?'

'But you aren't as dear as my sister.'

Cue annoyed puff of air.

'ANYWAY,' she continued ignoring my statement, 'I've already booked you and Grey's tickets back to Italy. I have some business and some things to do, and I think that you'll be _very_ interested in some of them.'

'Huh?'

'Just come! You need to be at the airport on Sunday by one in the afternoon!' I glanced at the clock.

'It's like, twelve noon right now. Do you mean next Sunday?'

'No.'

'Then bye.'

'No, wait! I haven't chewed you out yet for not sending emails!'

I ignored her and put down the phone. 'Come on Grey, we have a plane to catch.' I said, annoyed. Grey chuckled while clicking around on the computer.

'Yes, Liza-sama was always one to not ask for permission.' I huffed and got my bag (which Grey miraculously already packed) and stormed to the kitchen to drink a cup of juice before we went.

'Do we have to check-out of this hotel?'

'No, we've booked it until approximately... four years from now.' I did some mental maths and did a wry smirk.

'Ha, that's when I'm sixteen.'

_The year I died... they really do plan well, don't they? Heh, seems like I'll be living here for awhile._

'I got the tickets, Miss. We should leave now.'

'Okay.'

And we went.

* * *

'Thank you for confirming your identities. This way please.'

We got ushered politely onto the private plane and they got ready to take off. I sighed into my hand and looked out the window thing.

The last month was a bit non-exciting. After I helped Yoshikuni-san, I went and collected twenty-eight thousand from him as payment, which I got chewed at by Spartan Teacher No. Two because he had offered three _million_.

Me and Kumiko had become friends, although she was a little shy. But once she got over her shyness she was a really nice and playful child. Sometimes when Yoshikuni was away and I was just lounging around, Kumiko would be allowed to come up and we'd play games.

It was fun. But then their hotel stay ended and I gained a permanent billionaire ally for the rest of my life.

Seriously. I never actually thought of having Yoshikuni on my side. But whatever flows goes I guess. And I got the reputation of being a really good info gatherer (though that was no surprise to every person who knew about the Brighteyes) and also the reputation of the one who required the _least _pay in the Brighteye family.

So I got swamped double now.

Sigh.

Tsuna had gotten into Nami-chu, unsurprisingly to me and very surprising for everyone else (most people knew because Tsuna literally burst into happy tears in front of the board. Then tripped and fell face flat in front of his whole future class). Though when I checked, he had gotten the smallest score to get into Nami-chu.

Trust Tsuna to have good luck.

Oh, and I met Hibari. Mostly because he was sitting under the Sakura trees and there were too many students "crowding" in front of him.

All the first years were scarred for life, scarred for life.

I swallowed a lolly to get rid of that weird feeling you get in your ears when you go up in a plane. I hate that part of the flight when your ears feel like they were being pushed in. It sucks.

After awhile, it stabilised so I went back into my thoughts after getting a mango shake and a promise of teriyaki salmon for lunch.

So… there was about another few months before Reborn came to "tutor" Tsuna. And a whole year before any action starts. Blowing bubbles into my mango shake through my straw (Grey discreetly frowned at me at that so I discreetly stopped), I thought about the "things" that Liza thought I'd be interested in.

Huh. I hope it wasn't anything weird.

...

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's going to be weird.

This _is_ Katekyo Hitman Reborn after all.

* * *

'Miss, we're landing.' I rubbed my eyes and peeked out the window still under my blanket.

Ah, the private Brighteye aeroplane docks thingy. The plane flew around in circles a few times before it started landing. Grey gave me another lolly to suck on for my poor ears (I saw him take one for himself) and the dock thingy started looking bigger and bigger.

Liza was there when I stepped down those aeroplane stairs that let you out of the plane (Grey muttered something about luggage and escaped, lucky him).

'Alice!' She ran across to me with happy tears streaming from her eyes. Then she glomped me.

'Liza, you're heavy.' I mumbled under her. Liza immediately stood up and gave me a hand.

'Are you calling me fat, Alice?' Liza sniffled.

'Yes. Now what guests did you want me to meet?'

She had a light bulb moment so I waited a bit. 'Ah, yes. I'm going to this annual party where rich people and Mafioso go to flaunt their wealth and get more connections. Anise forced me to go because she couldn't and well, I thought you might want to too because you're protecting the Vongola Tenth after all and I bet some of these people would be pretty useful...'

I stopped her tirade.

'Okay, Liza. But who's Anise?' Liza stared at me.

'Like, the one you call Spartan Teacher Number Two?' I stared at her.

'Oh. Who knew she had such a pretty name? Certainly doesn't match her personality.' I muttered the last bit really _really _softly. She had mini cameras everywhere, I swear.

And she can lip read.

Liza chuckled.

'Well, better get going then. I already got a formal dress for you,' ...What? A formal dress party? I never agreed to this! 'And I think we need to leave about _now_...'

'But I just got here!' I whined. Liza looked at me and swept me into a hug again.

'Aw, you're so cute!' I choked. She didn't let go. 'But what goes, goes. We have to get there at eight in the evening.' I looked at the sky. It did seem kind of duskish.

'Oh, whatever. I can catch up on sleep in the car.'

'That's a good girl.' She said as she ruffled my hair. I twitched.

'Okay then, let's go.' I walked away from her hair ruffling and tried to fix my hair.

'Don't worry about fixing it; we have professional makeup artists and everything!' Liza called. 'And the car is waiting in the opposite direction!'

I stiffly turned around and started walking again, trying to ignore Liza's giggles.

* * *

'What is this? Where are your muscles?' Jack (Spartan Teacher Number One) practically screamed in my ear as I was trying to stay still for the makeup artists (ugh, makeup). Jack was making it surprisingly hard. 'Haven't you been training in Japan?'

'No.'

He wailed and acted like a big drama queen, yelling all sorts of "Baby" and "How could she waste my hard work". I could see the makeup artist trying hard not to laugh. I looked at her for a second (she squirmed uncomfortably under my eyes) to tell her I wanted to get up. She backed away.

'Jack.'

'Yes, baby?'

'Get out.' And I proceeded kicking him out the door. 'When I say I don't train, it doesn't mean I don't run. Anyway, I'm plenty strong enough to get you out of here, so there.'

I slammed the door in his face. Woot, that was ultimate stress relief. That felt _really _nice. Walking towards the chair and slipping in it again (the makeup artist seemed scared of me now) I said the simple word 'Continue.'

She practically flew to my aid (not).

Were my eyes really that scary?

* * *

The party was already in full swing, if you would call it that, when we got there. It was all expensive suits for men and expensive dresses for women with champagne carriers everywhere. I tugged at my knee length dress (it wasn't _uncomfortable _thank goodness, me looking twelve doesn't require me to wear very formal clothing) and looked around.

Classical music drifted down the hallway as we walked towards the room where the party was being hosted. Sparkly chandeliers, red carpet, I whistled. They really pulled out all the stops for this.

I was walking with Liza, of course, and Jack and a few other Brighteyes (me and them were all on friendly terms) and they presented our invitations. The people looked at our invitations with bored eyes, then their eyes snapped open to look at us, then they immediately opened the door for us.

'Brighteyes, please enjoy this party.' Liza gave her regal nod (Liza not acting happy was weird) and breezed past, holding my hand like I was a little kid (well, maybe I looked like one, but _still_...).

I stared at the doorman, the doorman stared at me, and then I smiled a tiny smile at him to see his reaction.

It was totally opposite to the reaction I imagined.

His face lit up, I could practically see flowers dancing around his head. I could _see_ his thoughts, they were so obvious. It would practically be on the lines of "_Aw, she's so cute, she reminds me of my little daughter when she was young..." _or something like that.

On second thought... no. He didn't seem old enough to have a daughter.

As we walked through _another _set of doors, I wondered, did I really look that cute? Of course, the makeup was amazing (I actually had colour on my cheeks for once, although it felt horrible) and the dress was cute but...

Then I looked at the roomful of guests and that shut me up. They all had beaky noses or freakishly stretched skin or had the huge rolling Mafioso look going on. Of course, some (the abject minority) had a total beautiful look going on, but still. No kids around either.

Yup, the typical rich people look, even huge eyes (whoa, you can spot the plastic surgery) and big boobs looked kind of fake.

I had kind of crooked teeth, my eyes looked like torches, but the makeup people and the hair people did a good job. They made me look presentable at least.

I scratched the last thought of not being cute. I was little kid cute compared to these guys. I looked around again, and I started spotting more normal people in the crowd, and finally a few children clinging to their parents' clothes. Then I found more normal (but well dressed) people when I scanned the room again.

Actually, I think it was just that the ugly ones stood out too much.

Way too much.

Way way _waaaay_ too much.

We stood there in relative safety for a total of five seconds (wow, five SECONDS) until a person looked at the group in the door. And noticed our eyes. Then immediately started worming their way towards us.

'Brighteyes! Wonderful to see you here!' And at his words, more people swivelled at us and started walking our way.

I was suddenly glad for Liza's hand.

All the Brighteyes around me started doing pro bland smiles and small talk. Liza was amazing, she even looked kind of cool (note the kind of). Then the people looked at me.

'Aw, is she the new Brighteye everyone talks about?' Liza looked down at me and squeezed my hand comfortingly.

'Yes, she's twelve this year.'

Their eyes gleamed.

'So do you have a special mission?' they asked me, and I shrank back. Liza looked at me in concern and answered for me.

'Yes.' And they were prevented from asking me another question from a commotion at the door.

'The Ninth Vongola Head, his external advisor and the Arcobaleno Reborn!'

Now, _that_ got my attention.

Everyone swivelled their heads around at three of the biggest names in underworld history. Then the surge came. Rich people, wannabe rich people, _everyone_ surged I tell you (except for me and Liza. And other people who had sense not to get squashed like a bug in the crowd).

So Liza put the opportunity to small talk. She squeezed my hand and led me to a balcony where it was relatively shady and quiet. There were chairs set up too, and a clean table with small refreshments.

'I don't like crowds.' I told Liza. 'I don't like their looks either.'

Liza nodded and started talking about something else.

'Did you know that the Bovino family just invented a type of fabric that diffuses the effect of a bomb on the body?' I looked at her in interest, and she kept talking. 'The fabric lets you be within range of a grenade and still be relatively unharmed.'

'Wow.'

'I know. But the setback is that when it's washed it shrinks to a baby size practically and that it's in cow print. You see, the things that it's made from just kind of make it into cow print and nobody in the family likes cow print...'

I thought of Lambo and how he somehow survived every single explosion in his _cow print suit_.

'Isn't there a child hitman-in-training called Lambo? Give a bodysuit to him.' Liza looked at me with a "huh?" look on her face, but when she looked in my eyes she somehow understood.

'Ah, future stuff eh? Better not tell me.'

'Okay.'

'I'll strongly suggest it to them.'

'Yeah, that's cool.'

A scream came from the hall that sounded surprisingly like Jack. Liza sighed.

'Jack gets kind of hyper with alcohol. I _told_ him not to drink but _nooooo...'_ I laughed and when Liza went to get up I told her thanks. And that I would stay here for the rest of the party.

'You sure?'

'Yeah, I like it here. Not many mosquitoes, cool air, refreshments, kind of dim, no crowds...' I listed all the pros of the area. Liza interrupted.

'I'll check up on you later then.' I nodded to show her that I heard and she left the little balcony that wasn't really a balcony (since it was in a weird L shape. Like, you went to the balcony and there was an area to the left where the table and chairs and stuff were in so that you wouldn't get the blast of noise. There was a little mini candle on the table too, which was kinda cool.)

I sat there for awhile. It was quiet except for the babble coming from the hall and I was kind of getting drowsy...

Then a crash onto the balcony and a person hiding practically under the table. My eyes had adjusted to the dark by now, and when I looked at him and I smirked inside, fully awake now.

_Ha, who knew I would meet Dino here? Fate must love playing tricks on me..._

I watched silently as Dino peered out into the hallway cautiously, and he practically jumped ten feet in the air when I said a bored 'Yo.'

Dino whirled around and saw me.

'Err... hi. Have you been here for a long time?'

'The whole time. What are you doing?' He stood up fully and scratched the back of his head in a sheepish kind of way that now had me convinced that he truly was Dino, Bucking horse, or bronco, or something or another...

'Haha... hiding.'

'That much was obvious.' I said dryly. He flinched and sat down across from me.

'Are you a Brighteye?' He said, indication my torchy eyes (ha, torchy!)

'Yeah. My name is Alice though.'

'Ah, Alice. My name is Dino, from the Cavallone family.'

'I know.'

We sat in awkward silence for awhile.

'Is the rumour true that you charge the least in your whole family?' I tipped my head back to think.

'Yeah. I helped this billionaire dad to find his kidnapped daughter and I took twenty-eight thousand instead of driving the bargain to five million, so yeah. I got chewed out for that too...' Dino laughed and popped a random biscuit into his mouth.

'That's already a lot of money though.'

'Yup. And you shouldn't talk while eating. You've got the whole table full of crumbs.'

I chuckled when Dino looked alarmed and tried to hide his embarrassment.

'I'm not always like this! I mean…'

'You're useless without your subordinates.' I finished for him. Dino looked at me incredulously and I laughed. Then I tapped my eyes.

'Brighteye, remember?'

'Oh, right. Your eyes are kind of creepy–' and then he got cut off by a small black foot kicking him in the cheek. His head flew comically sideways and I laughed.

Reborn. He looked exactly the same, fedora, Leon, black suit, tie...

'And you are?'

'Alice. Brighteye. Hello, Reborn.' He nodded.

'You've been talking to this useless student of mine?' He said in his squeaky voice, his black eyes gleaming (oh, that was not a good sign) and cheeks with _lots _of baby fat. He actually looked like the Reborn from the manga/anime.

Amazing.

Actually, now I think of it, everything in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn world was, well, real? Unreal? Real, but it could support animeish characteristics?

Yeah, I nodded to myself. The third one sounded right. I looked up at Reborn again, instantly melted and picked him up (hey, Yamamoto could, why not me? He was just so _cute!_)

'You're so cute!' Leon turned into a cane and he lightly bopped me on the head.

'I'm not cute. I'm mafia.'

'Of course.'

Meanwhile, Dino was watching this exchange incredulously.

'Reborn!' He finally burst out. 'Why aren't I allowed to touch you and you let her even call you cute?'

And Reborn gave his Reborn answer.

'Because I like her.'

And Dino nearly fell over the balcony to his death two stories below. Reborn ignored him in true Reborn fashion and turned towards me.

'Are you going to join a family?' Still with that gleam in his eye.

'No, not now. Maybe later though.'

And the Reborn gleam in Reborn's eyes flashed.

'Oh, most Brighteyes say no to that question.' I flashed a smile.

'I'm twelve here, and I'm young. Of course I have to look at options.' He nodded, his head bobbing. Then he turned to Dino.

'Get me some juice.'

Dino spluttered.

'But there's juice right there!' Dino pointed at the table and sure enough there was a pitcher of orange juice on the table.

'But I want apple juice. Get me some.'

'But the fan girls are out there! They would eat me alive!'

Reborn turned his back on him and faced me. 'My student is so pathetic that he is even afraid of girls wearing high heels…' he said in his dejected voice. Dino snorted as he crept slowly towards the doorway.

'It's the high heels I'm scared of.' Reborn turned around.

'You're still there? Get going.' Then he raised his hand and I saw Leon on his hand getting ready to shape-shift anytime. Dino's eyes widened and he rushed out the doorway.

Reborn turned to me satisfied and sat down on the table cross-legged. He got to business really quickly.

'I heard that every Brighteye go on a special mission when they're twelve. What's yours?'

'I'm guarding someone.'

Reborn perked up.

'Who?'

'A certain someone called Sawada Tsunayoshi.' And guess what? Reborn _really_ perked up at that.

'Sawada Iemitsu's son?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Can't tell you that.'

Reborn sat in contemplative silence.

'I will tell Iemitsu and the Ninth.' He said it as a statement, not as a question.

'I thought so. Here.' I looked into my bag and found what I wanted. It was a file of Tsuna's marks, grades, personality, impressions, status in school, crush, everything that I'd found out about Tsuna from the past few months. 'Think this would be good for your next assignment after Dino.'

Reborn took it and scanned through it.

'Thank you.' I raised my eyebrows. _Reborn _said thank you?

Was the world ending? He only said thank you to Nana, Tsuna's mom! Reborn looked over his shoulder. Then he looked at me.

'Bye.' And then he disappeared. I blinked.

That was random.

Dino crashed into the balcony again.

'Reborn,' he panted, 'I got your apple juice…' And he looked up to see there was no Reborn and only a twelve year old trying to wipe off her makeup. He stared disbelievingly. 'No way, he made me go for apple juice for _nothing?'_

I laughed at his dejected expression and his mumblings of "why is he always like that…"

Really, this was better than any comedy show.

* * *

Dino and I bonded over Spartan tutorship.

'Yeah, it was horrible.'

'Mhmm, I understand how you feel. Though Reborn likes using explosives more than knives.'

'Which is worse, knives, burns, or non-stop muscle pains?'

'Can't be sure. They're all bad aren't they?'

'I hate learning sometimes.'

'I hate learning all the time.'

'Ha, I'm better than you.'

'Well, I'm better than you with my whip.'

'How many people in your family?'

And we kept going on and on and on and on and on with small talk.

It was actually quite fun. The topics ranged from caretakers,

'Yeah, Romario acts like my dad. Actually, my whole family acts like my dad. Except Romario does it more because I think he's gotten sick of watching me fall down stairs all the time.'

'Grey's nice. He acts like my mom.'

To Spartan teachers again

'I have two teachers that are Spartan.'

'Oh gosh, I can't imagine two Reborns. That's just creepy.'

To favourite foods

'I don't know.'

'I don't know either.'

And finally to families

'My family is messed up. Actually, all mafia families are messed up.'

'I'm dead to my family.'

That got Dino's attention.

'Why? Didn't your family come with you? That's your mom isn't it?' Dino crept to the doorway, peeked his head out to make sure there weren't any fan girls lurking nearby and quickly pointed to Liza (who seemed to be having a business talk). I whacked him on the head and he gave me kicked puppy eyes which I ignored.

'Does she _look_ old enough to be my mom? Eejit.'

'Hey! I take offence!'

And topics became light-hearted again. Until Reborn came back.

'Dino, why are you lazing about here? And where is my apple juice?'

Dino, who had long drank that glass of apple juice stared at him.

'I thought you didn't want it!' Reborn sighed and faced me again.

'See how heartless my student is?' He said in this heartbroken voice that didn't fool anybody. But it was so cute that I _had _to hug him again. And he didn't whack me for it.

(Ha, he lets Yamamoto do it, not Tsuna or Gokudera or Dino, but Bianchi's allowed, Kyoko and Nana too… And now I'm in the allowed group! Hey wait, the allowed groups mostly consisted of females… Reborn's a closet pervert?

…Nah)

Dino gave me this look that was mock "you betrayed me!" And I gave back a look that said "he was too cute!" and Dino shuffled out of the balcony once again on a quest for Reborn's apple juice. Female screams of "Dino, look here!" were once again heard, and Reborn once again sat on the table facing me, after hopping out of my arms.

'I told Iemitsu and the Ninth.' I raised my eyebrows but didn't interrupt (I mean, this was Reborn. I would probably give me a few lumps on my head or something if I interrupted). 'The Ninth was surprised.'

'Huh?' I said eloquently. Reborn smirked, but went back into his serious face (which was also cute).

'The Ninth said that he had Tsunayoshi in mind for the Tenth candidate after the last one was killed.'

'Ah.'

'And he never said anything about it to anyone, not even Iemitsu, though he had his suspicions.'

'Okay.'

'So how did you know?'

'Brighteye.' I said simply. Reborn nodded, accepting it (surprisingly).

'And he also had an idea to send me to tutor Tsunayoshi because the success I had with Dino and how similar the case is.'

'Ah, that's cool.'

'The most interesting thing is that…' Reborn trailed off. I waited, and soon enough, Reborn continued the sentence. '…that after hearing a Brighteye had already started guarding Tsunayoshi, he laughed and said that it was final then and that my next assignment would definitely be him.'

I blinked. Oh. Now that was quite interesting.

'But Dino still hasn't gotten to the stage where he can go on without me, so I probably won't be there until late in the year.'

I shrugged.

'That's ok. I expected it.' Reborn smirked.

'There was also something that the Ninth said that's quite impossible. For technology nowadays that is.'

'What?'

'He said there's always been the rumour that the Brighteyes know the future.'

I was sure my eyebrows were up to my hairline.

'Really? Now that's interesting.' Reborn made to reply, but instead looked over his shoulder, said a bye and vanished, just like before. I had a suspicion on why he did that…

'Reborn, I hope you don't make me get apple juice in a room full of hormonal females _ever again…_' Dino wheezed out as he collapsed on a chair. Then he opened his eyes to yet again to see me looking at him without Reborn.

'Where's Reborn?'

'Gone.'

'AGAIN?'

* * *

I had added Dino into my contact list on my phone. Now it consisted of Miwa, Setsuna, Grey, Liza, Kumiko (who already had a phone), Yoshikuni-san and Dino.

Two ordinary friends, a billionaire and his daughter, a butler, my too happy overprotective sometimes psychotic "sister" and a mafia boss.

Nice. Very ordinary.

I snapped my phone shut and looked out the window of the room in the official Brighteye home.

Even in Italy there was nothing to do. So I decided to go back to Japan.

* * *

'Alice-chan!'

I looked at Kyoko behind my sunglasses. How did Kyoko find me under my sunglasses? She must have hyper intuition or something…

'Kyoko.'

'Have you seen Hana anywhere?'

'No. Didn't you walk together?'

'Yes, but we got separated near the entrance.'

'Well, first day of school, I guess a lot of people would be milling around the school gates…'

A scream ripped through the air and a horde of students ran towards the front of the school. Where me and Kyoko were.

'Did your fan club grow or something?' I asked Kyoko.

'What fan club, Alice-chan?' She blinked innocently at me. I was about the reply when a voice reached my ears.

'No crowding at the front gates, or I'll bite you to death.'

Hibari stalked forward, his jacket sleeves flapping with the words for "Disciplinary Committee" on its sleeve.

Oh. So that's why they ran away. I watched as Hibari's eyes scanned the crowd. Then it landed on me. What?

'Sunglasses aren't part of the school uniform.' He said coldly, tonfa flashing discreetly under his jacket. I nearly pouted. I had hoped to maintain low profile.

'Of course. I'll take them off.' I said, disappointed. Maybe I should've just gone into the main school building _before_ Hibari spotted me.

Sigh.

I took them off, and immediately turned my back to the crowd, using Kyoko as a shield to face the main school building.

'Go, Kyoko!'

'But Hana!'

'We're all in the same class; we will meet her in class!'

'Oh, that's right!' Then she proceeded to be my shield (maybe thinking I was just strange like that and she shouldn't concern herself over my weird actions) until we got into our classroom.

I sat at the back, in the back corner. Kyoko was a bit disappointed when she realised that, as she had already claimed a spot in the middle for herself.

'Are you sure, Alice-chan?'

'Yeah, it's quieter at the back.'

'Okay then…' and she trailed sadly back into her seat. I nearly melted, and then violently shook my head. No! I will sit at the back! It's been that way since I was in kindergarten, no way will I change now!

So I just sat there, looking out the window at the tops of Sakura trees which were starting to bloom out like pink feathers. The teacher came in, we were required to stand up, and just when we sat back down, Tsuna crashed in and apologised to the teacher for being late.

Then he _somehow_ tripped over thin air and face planted in between the teacher's legs.

The class laughed, someone from our old school yelled "No-good Tsuna!" and that was how Tsuna inherited the nick-name through middle school.

I sighed.

First impressions are important after all. I took the sunglasses out of my pocket and put them on again.

Hibari can't find me here right? He would probably be lying on the roof looking at clouds or something…

* * *

**Tsuna view**

Slinking into his chair (around the middle of the class), Tsuna drooped.

This was a new start! And he had messed it up in front of… He glanced at Kyoko. He had messed up in front of Kyoko-chan! She was giggling with Kurokawa, and in Tsuna's eyes it was like condemning him to a death sentence.

In the midst of his despair, he realised that students were standing up and introducing themselves one by one by one...

'Sawada…' A dreamlike voice seemed to float through the air.

Was that Kyoko-chan? Aah, Kyoko-chan…

'_Tsuna-san, your introduction to the class was so amazing! I felt my heart beat so fast and I think I fell for you!'_

'_Ah, of course, Kyoko-chan. I've loved you since last year when we met in camp.'_

'_I love your manly voice, Tsuna-san!'_

'_Don't call me Tsuna-san, call me Tsu-kun!'_

'_Okay, Tsu-kun!'_

'SAWADA, QUIT DROOLING AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF!'

'YES!' Tsuna shot out of his seat. The class laughed. More importantly, _Kyoko_ laughed. 'M-my name is S-sawada Tsunayoshi, but you can just call me Ts-tsuna.'

'Or No-good Tsuna!' The same guy who called out the first time called. The teacher frowned at him.

'Stop it, Yamada. Okay, since the seat behind Sawada isn't filled, the next to introduce themselves is Bright.'

Tsuna froze. What? He must be dreaming, no no no no no no _way_ can luck be so cruel to send that confusing Bright-san (who was an _extortionist) _into his class. Not when he was just celebrating over _Kyoko_ being in his class.

Unfortunately to Tsuna, fate was that cruel.

'My name, is Bright. Bright Alice.' Tsuna heard the quiet dry voice from the back. There was a silence.

'Anything more? And please take off your sunglasses.' The teacher prompted, Tsuna noticed the whole class was staring towards to back left hand corner of the room. He vowed not to look that way, he wasn't going to look that way, he wasn't going to look that way…

'No.'

Everyone gasped at that rejection.

'Sunglasses are against the school rules.' The teacher said, becoming stern.

'I meant no, as in, I don't have anything else to talk about anymore. I'll take off my sunglasses now.' There was a pause then a rustle.

The teacher seemed to shiver. What was going on? Wait, he wasn't going to turn…

Tsuna turned.

And got subjected to the full blown glare (or not-so-glare, he couldn't tell if she was glaring or not) she was making. _Ohmygoshshewassoscary_! Tsuna turned into stone. Then someone laughed.

'Now, now, Alice-san, don't do that.' Tsuna looked at the brave idiot who could brave Alice's glare.

Yamamoto. Should've known.

'O-okay, you can sit down now. Next!' The teacher looked at Bright and it was obvious that he marked her as a problem child.

Did Bright-san just sigh?

* * *

**Random view**

You really didn't notice her until her eyes came out, she mused. She didn't even realise she (was her name Bright? Yes, Bright Alice) was sitting next to her until the teacher called her name.

It was as if she was sitting next to some sort of moveable shadow. It was creepy.

And her eyes! What type of colour were they? They were a clear yellow (but for some reason, they were so intensely yellow that she just had to look away from them), but nobody had yellow eyes! It's an anomaly!

'Don't mess with her, Jun.' A whisper came from the right.

'Why?'

'Rumours say she's super rich.'

'So?'

'And that she's an extortionist.'

'Oh.'

'And she's got a crazy protective fan club.'

'Why?'

'I don't know. She looks kind of colourless, but her eyes make up for it, I guess.'

'She's creepy…'

'Yeah.'

They didn't notice the twitch that came into the eyebrow of the person who they were talking about.

* * *

**Alice view – a few months later**

'Alice-chan!'

'What, Kyoko.' I said, not even bothering to put a questioning sound into my sentence.

'I don't get this!'

'Ask someone else. Hana is good, isn't she?'

'But you're always top of the grade! And you explain things well!' I sighed and unburied my head from my book.

'Ask me tomorrow. That homework isn't due until next week, right?'

'Yeah. You're going to hold to that promise right, Alice-chan?' Kyoko gave me her sternest (which wasn't really that stern) look.

'I will, don't worry.'

* * *

I was texting Setsuna before class while waiting for Kyoko (who said she would be a bit early today) when the door burst open.

'Alice-chan!'

'Kyoko, homework explanation, right?' She shook her head violently from side to side.

'I think Sawada-san just made a joke and I couldn't laugh!'

I gave her my best blank face.

'I mean, he was wearing just boxers and then he asked me to go out with him, and I called him hentai… Oh no, he wouldn't get offended, would he?' She gave her worried face. 'And I'm wondering where Hana is… Hey, Alice-chan, why are you smirking?'

'No, nothing Kyoko. Just say to him that you didn't get his joke. You just sometimes don't know how to laugh, that's all. I mean, I don't think Sawada would get offended at _you_.'

And, as per usual, she didn't get my implication.

'Oh, that's good. But I don't think I'm ready to talk to him yet… Maybe after school.'

'That's fine, that's fine…'

_So… Reborn is finally here._

I grinned.

_Let the story begin._

* * *

**Omake – in the days between the first day of middle school and Reborn coming, on the day when they displayed the scores for the mid-year test**

'Alice-chan, why are you staring at the score boards with your sunglasses on on a cloudy day?' Kyoko asked.

'I just don't want to get noticed…' I shrunk back and tried to spot my name.

'Oh, I found your name, Alice-chan! You got first!' I found my name after that.

'That's awesome. Now let's go before I get caught…' I sneaked away and tried to get into my classroom as fast as possible.

As it stands, only Tsuna (with his Vongola hyper intuition), Yamamoto (with his weirdo baseball spotting), Kyoko (I dunno why) and Hibari (a reason? Well, he's _Hibari) _could really notice me when I was wearing sunglasses.

Of course, it was the fourth person on the list that I most desperately wanted to hide from. I wasn't in any way wanting to be "bitten to death", thank you very much. And as if Heaven was mocking my thoughts, a cold voice came from behind. The crowd suddenly seemed much quieter.

Much _much _quieter.

'For breaking school rules, you will be _bitten to death_.'

I turned around and ducked a tonfa.

_Oh crap._

And I ran away as fast as I could (which, was actually very fast. Meat cleaver training plus running away from rabid rich people at the hotel equals lightning speed running).

Why did Hibari seem to pop up everywhere I go? Sunglasses weren't that big of a problem, were they? I took off my sunglasses and went into my classroom (and the relative safety of my chair).

'So that was the fifth time this week?'

'Yeah. And it's only Wednesday. _Why_ does he seem to find me every time?'

'I think it's because you're the only one who successfully runs away.' Hana said knowingly. 'If you let yourself get thrashed a bit, I bet he'll stop trying to find you straight away.'

'But that'll hurt!'

Hana rolled her eyes. 'Duh. The other way is to stop bringing those stupid sunglasses.'

'But I've grown attached to them…'

'That or die.'

I thought for a few moments.

'Okay, okay, I'll stop wearing them… They were so useful in hiding my eyes when I was sleeping in class though…'

'I wonder how you got top in the grade.'

I flashed her a cheeky smile. 'I don't.'

'Impudent little brat – '

But unfortunately, our conversation was cut short by a flash of metal in the hallway outside our classroom.

'Well, bye! Gotta keep running while not in class!' Hana laughed.

'Bye… wait, what are you doing opening the window, OI THIS IS THE SECOND FLOOR!'

I jumped out anyway. Better than being beaten up by a freakishly strong person with tonfas.

* * *

**Well, development guys. The story is starting, and I will put up a poll soon – should MHJ follow the anime (fight, comedy, fight, comedy, fight, comedy) or the manga which is (comedy, comedy, comedy, fight, fight, fight, etc.).**

**I hope you all enjoyed the longer chapter and sorry for being late. Ehehe, my fault since it's the holidays (I've been sleeping too much. After all, catching up on sleep is top priority). **

**XD**


	13. She meets Takohead and Baseball Nut

**Thank you for your votes and reviews and reading and EVERYTHING! You're all awesome! I give you all invisible virtually non-existent tasteless stale cyber-cookies! Don't worry, they were extra cheap. ;D**

**Thanks also goes to my awesome sister for betaing even late in the night ^(OO)^. Loves you!**

**Please enjoy, it's not as long as the last one but still pretty long. They meet Yamamoto and Gokudera here. Haha!**

* * *

Looking out the window (I left Kyoko to Hana; I didn't know how to comfort people. Mostly made it worse, really), I saw Tsuna in his blue boxers holding really coarsely fixed up clothes. Then Hibari Kyoya just had to look up and see me staring at them and I ducked under the window sill.

Then I berated myself. Reflex, it was all reflex. I didn't bring my sunglasses today after all. No need for him to chase me and try to bite me to death. As I cooled my forehead on the table _he's not going to bite me to death, not going to bite me to death, not going to bite me to death… _a squeaky voice came from under my desk.

'Ciaossu.'

Okay. I admit I was a bit high strung. It would happen to anybody who've been chased by Hibari (who runs freaking fast) for the last few months. So excuse me when I fell out of my chair in surprise.

'Ow… that hurt.'

Immediately, the female next to me held out a hand. Jun, I think. I helped her when she was preparing for Home EC and her partner was away sick. You see, in home economics, a pair is assigned for every week in rotation to bring in the things we would need in the lesson. And well, that week we were doing potatoes and I felt sorry for her needing to lug two sacks of potatoes and lent a hand.

And well, let's say the female population of the school after that became friendlier. It's scary how sometimes when you make a friend another dozen suddenly become friendly as well.

'Are you okay, Alice-san?' I took her hand and smiled up at her.

'Thank you, Jun-san.'

'No problem.' She waved it away laughing and settled into her desk. 'I heard there was going to be a pop test tomorrow.' I nodded.

'I heard that too. Need to crack open the books.'

Jun laughed. 'It's not as if _you_ need to, Alice-san!'

I let out a chuckle.

'You flatter me.'

She laughed as well, and turned away from me to talk to her friend. So I took the time to look under my table. Two black eyes stared back up at me. I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

'Reborn!' I looked out the window again (Hibari was still there). 'But I swear you were just there at the school entrance!'

Reborn smirked.

'I've already built various secret passageways around the school.' My eyebrows rose even higher.

'I need to check that out then.'

Reborn hummed at me and nodded. 'Dame-Tsuna is coming; I'll leave now to get my furnishings for my secret hideouts.'

'Oh, the carpets and mini coffeemakers and things?' I asked, recalling the scenes where Reborn was always in a secret office like room drinking coffee hidden in a fire extinguisher, of all things.

'As expected of a Brighteye. I didn't mention what I was ordering to anyone.'

'Of course.'

'Thinking of joining Tsuna's family? Your asset to the family is needed.'

Trust Reborn to use "asset" when offering a mafia placement. I smiled genially.

'Probably.' Reborn smirked. Then I raised my finger. 'But my condition is that two people join the family before me. And those two people must be approved by me.'

Gokudera and Yamamoto. Them two were the closest to Tsuna since the story started, I couldn't join the family _before_ them. The story has started; I need to be careful not to wreck the storyline (you know the mission details? It was _clearly stated_ that slight changes were good; huge changes were not acceptable).

Reborn just smirked wider at my proposition. He eyes gleamed, and he stroked Leon.

'Deal.'

And he walked towards the wall, pushed in and entered a tiny lit hallway. I could barely swallow my elation. I did it! I got a way to join Tsuna's family without looking suspicious and it got handed to me on a silver platter!

I did a tiny smirk of my own and looked up just in time to see Tsuna framed by the doorway. The smirk died however, when the jeers started.

'Here comes underwear man!'

'A sudden confession to Sasagawa Kyoko!'

'Please go out with me!' A guy said, doing smooch faces at another guy, which the other reciprocated.

'He's going to be re-je-cted, right Sasagawa? He's no-good Tsuna after all.'

Kyoko shrunk in her seat, refusing to look at anyone in the eye. Hana laughed in good humour (I knew her well enough now that she was not laughing at Tsuna) and clapped Kyoko on the back, muttering some words in her ear that made her blush madly.

Then one of Tsuna's more friendly acquaintances (a round guy, he was okay really. He liked games more than girls, so I recognised as one of the few who weren't in Kyoko or my fan clubs) saw it fit to tell him of that kendo guy's scheme of publicly humiliating Tsuna.

'Tsuna, Mochida-sempai says that he wants to fight you during afternoon break in the gym.'

Tsuna visibly froze still in the doorway and his face turned ten shades of white while still glancing at Kyoko now and then. Then to my surprise, his gaze flickered towards me as well. I was too shocked to really make an appropriate face (should I smile in encouragement? Grimace in sympathy? Look away?)

My face turned to its default expression.

The bored face.

Tsuna immediately flinched and closed his eyes, then rushed to his desk. I winced for him; I've gotten scolded enough by Setsuna to know my bored face was scary for people not used to me. Miwa even added for timid people like herself, she was actually _scared _of me before she knew me.

Me! Scared of me!

I groaned in my brain while composing myself outside. Tsuna would get used to me… right?

Looking at Tsuna and his constipated expression, I sighed to myself. What will you do without Reborn, Dame-Tsuna?

Well, I guess if Reborn had any say in it (which he did of course), he must really want me if he said I was an asset to my face. And Reborn could be _really_ persuasive (persuasive a.k.a beat them up until they agreed). My style was more get their secrets and force them to agree. I mean, it takes less physical energy that way.

Hana was saying (really loudly, I must add) about how Mochida was going to get revenge, ladida, win over Kyoko with his manliness. Kyoko, blushing furiously, was just trying to protest (futilely) with 'N-no! We're only in the same committee!' I laughed at her misfortune. She turned to my back corner with a desperate look. 'Alice-chan, help me!'

Blank face. Confusion. I frowned.

'Why ask me?'

'People _always_ listen to you!'

'Oh, really?' I said, playing along. I knew that much, half the boys listened to me because they were fans (what made me so interesting, I really don't know). The other half respects me because of my school and athletics record. The girls listened because I displayed I was nice and un-bitchy. And smart.

Hana gave me a dead-pan expression. 'You didn't realise, Alice?'

I smiled at her and turned back to Kyoko. 'But watching you being flustered is fun, Kyoko-_chan_.' Kyoko gave a flustered sigh. I felt pity for her (and Tsuna) so I stood up and cleared my throat. Never had liked teasing anyway. I tried to convince myself I wasn't ruining the storyline.

'Please stop. You're flustering Kyoko.' I said in my louder-than-normal-but-still-not-that-loud voice. The class looked at me and had the grace to look a _bit_ guilty before going back to the normal everyday topics.

Kyoko shot me a half-embarrassed/half grateful look. Hana sighed.

'You took the fun out of it, Alice!'

'But is poking fun at other people's misfortunes so fun?'

'Yes. Just because you're the perfect student doesn't mean everyone is!'

I raised an eyebrow. 'Perfect student?'

Hana waved it away and continued to gossip with Kyoko. As I looked out the window towards the school entrance (Hibari was _still_ there), I observed Tsuna through the corner of my eye.

He sat there, constipated expression and all, though a bit more relaxed from the stopped jeers thrown his way. I nodded to myself happily. Even though I changed something, it was a good thing. Tsuna deserved some slack after all; I don't know how he held up after so many years of non-stop ego-beating.

The bell rang and a teacher stepped through the door.

I yawned through maths. Half dozed through English (I got a one hundred on my English test. Surprise surprise) and slept through geography. Woke up for awhile for morning break to eat (some people approached me for questions they didn't understand) and slept through the classes in the middle.

And all too soon, afternoon break. I filed with everyone to the gym, before doubling back to go to the entrance for the indoor balcony in the gym.

The indoor balcony was entered through the outside, up corrugated iron steps and a locked door. Then up there you could see the whole gym from up top.

But this time, unsurprisingly, the door was unlocked. I slipped through and looked to the left and right. Seeing Reborn, I walked towards him, using the student's chatter from underneath to mask my footsteps. The gym smelled funny from up here, like old wood.

'Reborn.' I greeted. Reborn nodded.

'Alice.' And that was that. We waited awhile, watching through the railing. Then Tsuna came. Reborn smirked. 'Look at that, his legs is shaking.'

'Ah, give him some slack. This is the first time he's ever done this before, I think.'

'Dame-Tsuna has a long way to go.' Reborn shook his head. I shrugged and continued watching. Mochida was shouting, and the last thing I caught was when he pointed to Kyoko.

'And the prize of course, is Kyoko!' Kyoko blinked and immediately looked affronted.

'Prize?'

'What a jerk.' Hana sniffed.

Mochida explained the rules, and started charging Tsuna. Yamamoto grabbed a bamboo sword and threw it at Tsuna, who caught it awkwardly, looked at Mochida and started running away.

'HIIIIIEEEEEEE!'

'DON'T RUN AWAY!'

'AAAAAH!'

'COME BACK HERE!'

This continued for awhile. It even became kind of boring until Tsuna tripped. Mochida raised his sword thing dramatically (what a poser…) and Kyoko said her fateful line.

'Sawada-kun! Do your best!'

Mochida wheeled around in shock. Tsuna lay on the ground, his words too soft for me to hear, but mouth clearly saying 'Kyoko-chan…'

Reborn smirked and cocked his gun.

'Fight with your Dying Will, Tsuna.' The muted gunshot seemed to echo around the gym, and Tsuna fell backwards with a thump.

And then next thing was so bizarre.

Tsuna lay there with his eyes wide open absolutely still like he was dead. Then he started _glowing_ and his clothes got ripped into shreds while Tsuna did like, forty flips in the air yelling 'REEEBOOOOOOORN! Beat Mochida-sempai with my Dying Will!'

I blinked.

Reborn smirked at his handiwork and stroked Leon.

I stared at Tsuna. That… was odd. No, it was stranger in real life. Definitely stranger. I mean, his shirt just ripped off!

And don't get me started on how his pants fell off.

God.

Reborn had a smug expression on his face, being the cause of the reason why Tsuna once again became a one second public stripper. When Mochida's hair was being ripped, I winced. Reborn's smirk just grew wider.

Sadism, I tell you, is surprisingly strong in Hitman babies.

Though…

Heh. I laughed a bit. Got to love the reactions.

Reborn got up (still smirking) and started walking towards the doorway that led outside.

'Oh no, Dame-Tsuna's going starting to think I'm a good guy.' I followed him while looking at Tsuna. True, this was the part where Tsuna was thinking about how this wouldn't have happened (Kyoko talking to him) without Reborn.

This led me to a question I had wanted to ask Reborn for a long time.

'Hey Reborn, you read minds?'

'Yes.'

I blinked at the quick response. I walked down the steps a bit quicker.

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'Really really?'

'Stop repeating, or I'll shoot.' He said in a mildly annoyed voice. I shut up instantly. 'I believe you're aware of the person who I called over from Italy?'

I tilted my head. Then I cursed myself for being stupid over this. Tsuna's future self-proclaimed right-hand man. I nodded.

'Hurricane bomb.'

'You approve.'

'Yes.'

'Good. If you didn't, I would have needed to persuade you.' He said with that perma-smirk on his face, looking innocent to the entire world… except me.

'Hmm… I need to go back to class.'

When I looked down again, Reborn had already gone. I did a chuckle and started slowly meandering to the entrance of the school building, enjoying the weather (slightly cloudy, with hints of sunshine; perfect day).

Just like Reborn. Maybe he went to build more secret hideouts or something.

* * *

The next day, there was a new transfer student. Guess who it was?

'I'll introduce the transfer student.' The teacher said, gesturing to a certain octopus head. 'He was studying abroad in Italy and transferred back here. His name is Gokudera Hayato-kun.' I studied him. He, I had to admit, did look a bit like the image of "hot-broody-delinquent" type.

The room immediately turned into girl gasps. I am sad to say that most of the girls in our class had suddenly become fan girls.

Gokudera stalked forward, ignoring the stares of the girls and glared at Tsuna. Then with one motion, he kicked him off his chair and toppled his table.

'Gokudera, your seat is there, Gokudera!' The teacher called.

The teacher was ignored.

Gokudera continued to glare at Tsuna (poor Tsuna had tears in his eyes) and then continued to stalk to his chair (three seats away to the right of me), glaring at Tsuna all the way.

Tsuna quickly pulled up his chair and glanced at Gokudera. Then he near 'hiiieee!'ed in fright when he realised Gokudera was still glaring at him.

I chuckled. By this attitude, who knew that Gokudera would become a life friend to Tsuna in a matter of hours?

* * *

After lunch, there was PE.

Baseball.

I got onto Yamamoto's group, one of the first ones to be picked. Flattered? Of course I was. As I stood around with my hands in my pockets as I watched people being picked one by one (none of them were Tsuna, Gokudera got into my team) I overheard a very interesting conversation.

'Do you think Yamamoto's okay?' A person whispered to another behind me. I perked up my ears while trying to look casual.

'Yeah, they say Yamamoto tried out for a baseball team but didn't get in.'

'No way, really?'

'Yeah, apparently it was muddy and he slipped in a crucial moment.'

'He's really passionate about baseball, I bet he could get in next time. I hope he's not to bothered about it, he seemed really depressed after the tryouts.'

'Eh, he's Yamamoto. He can go through just fine.'

'True. Yamamoto's practically perfect, anyway.'

I listened in contemplative silence. It was true Yamamoto was on good terms with everybody, it was in his nature. But early on in the year, I had realised that he hadn't got many close friends; it was like baseball was his closest friend and everyone else was held back by a something else.

Until now I didn't realise what that "something else" was. Maybe, I mused, it was just that. People thought he was too perfect. His grades weren't good but he always passed, good looking, tall, athletic, passionate, friendly…

No wonder he had a fan-club.

'Are we done choosing teams?'

'No, just one left.'

'I'm saying,' someone said from the opposite team, 'you can have no-good Tsuna on your team. He's crazy in kendo, but we all know he sucks at baseball!'

'No way!' Someone vehemently protested. 'We don't want to lose.'

I sighed and fidgeted. The breeze was freaking cold, my hands refused to warm in my pockets and some fan boys seemed to be sneaking towards me.

I haven't mentioned the fan boys for awhile, haven't I? They haven't decreased, they actually _increased_ (I bet it was due to that incident where I had to stand up to get a prize in assembly and helped a guy not trip over the stage. Does a normal helpful act like that really make people turn into fan boys? If it is… I'll never understand a guy's mind…).

Yamamoto's laugh was loud enough to jerk me out of my thoughts. He put an arm around the guy who protested with a smile on his face.

'Isn't it alright? Let him join our team.'

Tsuna turned towards Yamamoto with a surprised look on his face. The guy under Yamamoto's arm continued protesting. 'Are you serious, Yamamoto? You don't need to let that loser in.' I bristled at the loser comment and glared at him. He froze. Tsuna looked the guy and then looked at me. I turned away.

Yamamoto, who seemed to not realise that the guy froze, laughed. 'Come on, don't be so stingy!' He gave the frozen guy a little shove. 'I just have to keep them from hitting, right?'

'All right, if Yamamoto says so.' I raised an eyebrow at that before looking at Tsuna, who was looking at Yamamoto with a joyful smile on his face.

I noticed that Gokudera was _still_ glaring at Tsuna.

Yamamoto started the game, and the other team's pitcher didn't even _match _Yamamoto's awesome batting skills. One whack, home run. He came back to friendly cheering (he really was very popular, I mused) and squeals from the girls. The next batter was a girl, (not nearly as good), and after her was me.

The field was silent when I stepped on the field. A breeze blew and I shivered before tapping the base thing to show I was ready.

I had improved significantly. Now I could hit to the left as well as right towards the pitcher. Wonderful, isn't it? Now I could hit _two_ ways.

Wow. Hallelujah. Rejoice.

Narrowing my eyes at the pitcher (was he shivering? Maybe he was cold too…) he sent a throw that was relatively easy to hit in my standards. I hit, and ran a homerun with the girl in front.

Instead of the friendly cheering Yamamoto got, I get another type of treatment. The respectful a few steps away congratulations sequence. Basically they say happy stuff to me while being a metre away.

I guess my type of popularity and Yamamoto's type of popularity was different. Kind of wish it was the same…

Gokudera went on and off the field to girly squeals and cheers and Tsuna went on to random encouragements and yells of don't mess up (he messed up).

In the end, our team lost and typically, all cleaning went to Tsuna. I went with the rest of the team to get my jacket and went back with my bag so I could leave straight after cleaning (it was the end of school, anyway).

On the way, I saw Gokudera muttering stuff like 'observe more,' and 'restock dynamite'. I grinned to myself and closed my eyes when he came near.

He didn't seem to realise I was a Brighteye yet, so let's not tip him off yet…

When I went back, half the field was already swept, with Yamamoto having a serious expression on his face talking to Tsuna who had a positively surprised expression on his face. Then Tsuna stuttered something too far away for me to hear, and Yamamoto happily slung an arm over Tsuna's shoulders when he heard his response.

His next yell was loud enough for me to hear.

'Yosh! Then I'll stay back and practice more today then!'

And Tsuna grinned and laughed with him.

I smiled at the scene and walked away. When I glanced over my shoulder, I realised that Tsuna had saw me. My smile still on my face, I waved. Yamamoto noticed me too then, and he waved happily at me.

Tsuna did a shy wave of his own, and I suddenly had a strong urge to ruffle his hair.

That… was so cute!

Humming to myself, I walked out of the school (looking warily if Hibari was anywhere in sight) and leaned on the wall to wait for Grey.

He should be here anytime soon…

* * *

The next morning, I was walking to class when a guy rushed past me and slammed the door to our classroom open and yelled something to the people inside.

'HEY EVERYONE! Yamamoto is going to jump off the roof!'

'Huh, Yamamoto?'

'Impossible.'

'There're good and bad pranks, you know.' Said some Yamamoto fan girls in our class.

'When he was practicing yesterday, he went too far and broke his arm!' The guy said, explaining fast. The people seemed to get the hint about half-way through the sentence. Everyone knew Yamamoto's passion for baseball.

'Let's go to the roof!'

And there was a stampede out of the classroom, and I had to flatten myself to the wall (Ow, pins were sticking into my back) to avoid the rush. I stepped into the classroom to put down my bag. Then took out a shirt I had borrowed from the school, so I could return it.

Tsuna was standing in the middle of the room, shocked.

'Tsuna-kun, Alice! Let's go!' Kyoko said, running lightly out the door.

'Al-alright Kyoko-chan, after I go toilet.' Tsuna stammered, his face still pale. I looked around. It seemed Gokudera wasn't here yet...

I jogged lightly out the door and turned left to go down the stairs and out the building.

It was a clear day, the breeze felt crisp and it was sunny, warming my near permanent cold hands for once. Birds chirped, and I walked slowly towards where Yamamoto could be seen from the ground. I watched with interest at the ant trails, the random leaves, and I could practically taste the flowers, their scent was so strong…

'NOOO!' A simultaneous scream came from the roof. I looked up to see two people falling towards me at obvious fast speeds. My eyes widened and my trained reflexes kicked in as I sprinted away from them…

'REBORN! SAVE YAMAMOTO WITH MY DYING WILL!' I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Tsuna stripping (Mid-air stripping – if there's an Olympic sport pertaining that, Tsuna would win with the Dying Will Bullet) into his star-print boxers. Then he pushed off the wall and caught Yamamoto, then tried to slow their descent with his feet (which was _obviously_ not going to work).

'IT ITCHES, IT ITCHES!' Tsuna's head suddenly grew a spring and he bounced from the spot I had been two seconds ago, still holding Yamamoto in his arms.

And he bounced… straight towards where I was now.

'Guh…' I groaned, the air knocked out of me. Yamamoto was squashed on me, and Tsuna was squashed on him. How heavy could two guys be?

Apparently, very heavy.

As pieces of Tsuna's shirt rained down upon us three, Yamamoto called out to Tsuna with his serious face on. 'Y-yeah?' Tsuna replied, picking himself up from Yamamoto, relieved to see he was fine and staring in dismay at his irreparable shirt.

'You're amazing!'

'Eh?'

'Just like you said, you have to do it with a dying will!' Yamamoto grinned, giving a thumbs up and a smile. The sun suddenly shone on him making him glow and the light sparkled off his white teeth. He obviously paid attention to dental care. And with his smile on, you would never have guessed he was just suicidal.

Cue Tsuna's deadpan/surprised face. Then I decided to make my say.

'Gerrof.' I grunted out. Yamamoto looked down and saw me and immediately got up.

'Alice! I didn't realise you were there!'

'Hiiie! Alice-san, are you okay?' Tsuna peered at me. I stood up and brushed dirt off myself.

'I'm okay. Just a few bruises, I guess.'

'Sorry, haha.' Yamamoto apologised with his sheepish look and head scratch. Tsuna seemed relieved.

'But more importantly, are you two okay?' I peered at them critically. Then nodded, satisfied with the results. 'Class starts in seventeen minutes, get back to class. Oh, and Tsuna.'

'Y-yes?'

I looked at him and smiled. 'They should have spare shirts at the nurse office. No wait, I think I borrowed a shirt before…' I looked around and saw the shirt I had pulled out of my bag before in some nearby bushes. 'Aha, I dropped it when you two crashed into me.'

The two gave each other guilty looks. I ignored them and picked it up, picking some dirt away and giving it to Tsuna. It's good that the girl shirt and the guy shirt in the uniform weren't that different.

'Here, use it. Return it to the office for me too afterwards. Can't do anything with the lack of pants though.' I eyed his bare legs. Isn't he cold?

'Thank you, Alice-san!' He pulled it on.

'Haha, let's go then!' Yamamoto happily said, walking forward fast. I followed until I realised Tsuna was being detained… by a silver haired, dog-tag wearing guy. I smiled, and simply followed Yamamoto.

Halfway up the steps (I told Yamamoto that Tsuna was talking to another guy), Yamamoto stopped.

'Oh no, I forgot to thank Tsuna! I'll need to go back right away!' He then grabbed my upper arm with his non-broken arm and rushed down the stairs.

'Oi, wait, I don't need to thank him!'

'Aw, come on. We're both his friends, aren't we?' We were out the school building when the first explosion shook the grounds. We rounded the corner to see Gokudera holding dynamite between his fingers with Tsuna looking terrified out of his mind. Reborn was sitting safely in a tree.

'Y-yamamoto! Alice!' stammered Tsuna, looking positively terrified that we had come back to this dangerous situation. Then he seemed to notice the dynamite on the floor, dived for the two dynamite closest to him and extinguished them with his hands. 'Owowowow, that is NOT working!'

'What game is this, Tsuna? It looks like fun, let us in too!' Yamamoto let go of my arm to pick up one of the lighted dynamite on the floor. Tsuna's eyes widened in horror at the dynamite in Yamamoto's hands.

'No!'

'Fight with your Dying Will, Tsuna!'

And Tsuna, once again, ripped his shirt to shreds (he wasn't wearing any pants to begin with…).

'REBORN! EXTINGUISH ALL THE DYNAMITE WITH MY DYING WILL!'

And we watched with amazed eyes as Tsuna started flying around at amazing speeds extinguishing dynamite on the floor, dynamite in the air, dynamite everywhere…

Gokudera seemed to be struggling with holding all of the dynamite in his hands… and then one tipped onto the floor. His arms sagged, and suddenly the floor was absolutely littered with _lighted_ dynamite.

'It's… the end of me.' He murmured, as he looked up at the sky. To realise that someone was very busy extinguishing.

'Extinguish! Extinguish extinguish extinguish extinguish extinguish extinguish extinguish!'

And just when the last bomb was extinguished, Tsuna's dying will faded and he sat down with relief.

'I… made it!'

Tsuna sighed in relief and looked up. Then looked to his right in horror as Gokudera dropped to his knees in front of him. 'I made a mistake! It is you who is fit to become Juudaime! I'll follow you to the ends of the earth, ask whatever you want of me!' The silver-haired guy said with adoring eyes.

'W-what?'

'The loser becomes the other's subordinate. That's the family's rules.' Reborn walked towards Tsuna, smirking.

'Eh?'

'I… never actually wanted to become Juudaime. I just wanted to see if the Juudaime had enough strength to become a suitable boss.' Gokudera said with a down-cast face.

'Gokudera-kun…' Tsuna murmured, fully intending to say something to lift his spirits.

'But you proved me wrong! You are much more than I ever expected! You even risked your life to save me, your enemy! As Gokudera Hayato, I will give you my life!' He said with adoring sparkling eyes.

'No, that's troubling! C-can't we just be normal classmates?' Tsuna implored Gokudera. Gokudera's eyes immediately sharpened.

'Absolutely not.' He said in his scary voice. Tsuna put on his disbelieving face. I could see his thoughts already. _He's so scary that I can't refuse… What's with this situation?_

'Good job, Tsuna.' Reborn's voice sliced through his suffering. 'It's because of your strength that Gokudera became your subordinate.' Tsuna half-smiled. 'You've passed for today,' Reborn said, pulling out a book from nowhere, 'and you didn't even need too many Dying Will bullets.'

Yamamoto laughed.

'You're really interesting, Tsuna! Let me join the group too!' Yamamoto slung an arm around him, which immediately incited a reaction from Gokudera. 'You're the boss right, Tsuna?' Yamamoto smiled. Tsuna looked at him incredulously.

'Hey you!' Gokudera growled, 'Don't get so close to Juudaime!'

Yamamoto laughed. Gokudera glared. Tsuna tried to diffuse the argument. I smiled.

All was well and following plot.

Then Reborn turned to me.

'Your conditions are fulfilled. Do you approve of these two?' Gokudera looked at Reborn confusedly, stopping his tirade of words for a few seconds, which led to Yamamoto and Tsuna looking at Reborn, then me.

I grinned.

'Absolutely.'

'Then congratulations on joining Tsuna's family.' Tsuna's eyes widened.

'Oi, Reborn! Don't go recruiting my friends,' Aww, he thought of me as his friend? That's so cute, 'into this! Yamamoto and Alice are just my friends, I don't want them pulled into this Mafia thing of yours!'

'Reborn, what do you mean by accepting this idiot and weird eyed girl into the family?' Reborn smirked at Gokudera's expression as he backtracked and thought about what he'd just said.

'Weird-eyed…' He looked at me. Properly. 'Can't be… You can't be a Brighteye, can you?'

'Nice to meet you.' I bowed.

Gokudera's eyes immediately widened, and he smiled at Tsuna with adoring puppy eyes.

'As expected of Juudaime, attracting the attention of the Brighteyes!'

'Ah?' Tsuna and Yamamoto were confused with the interaction between Gokudera and me, but Tsuna definitely understood Gokudera's last sentence.

'G-gokudera!' He stammered, obviously flustered with the attention he was getting. I grinned. Reborn smirked.

'Aren't you glad, Dame-Tsuna? You already got three people for your family.'

'They're just my FRIENDS!' Tsuna yelled. Unfortunately, he just didn't seem believable wearing his star-print boxers.

A scornful laugh came from behind Tsuna and the others.

'Huh, what's up with them? The underwear guy is such a _loser_!' Some stupid third-years laughed at Tsuna. Gokudera's face immediately darkened and he started stalking towards the delinquents.

'Look like it's time to make myself useful.' He glared, brandishing lit up dynamite. 'I'll totally annihilate them.'

'Wait!' Tsuna screeched, 'you don't need to!'

Gokudera threw the dynamite, the third years screamed, I walked away from the crime scene to avoid chances of being bitten to death, Yamamoto laughed, Tsuna watched with his mouth open and Reborn stroked Leon.

All in all, it was very normal.

And to think all this happened before first class had even started

* * *

**People may have noticed; I mixed manga and anime happenings in here. To poll results, this story will go according to anime formant (comedy, fight, comedy, fight) but some things I may mix up. Like Yamamoto's suicide sequence. I just thought it would be strange for Yamamoto to join Tsuna just because he was interesting. In the manga, Yamamoto literally owes Tsuna his life, and he joins Tsuna. Then he just got attached and stayed, you get what I mean? Also, in the manga, Yamamoto didn't walk in on Gokudera confronting Tsuna. Please don't mind people; it's fanfiction after all? Ehehehehehe... *sweatdrops***

**And notice; Alice does not have any obvious spark at first meeting with the guys. Romantic interests are open. I mean, in real life, how often do you get the spark and be like 'you're my partner for life'? So I'm being realistic here and trying to develop relationships slowly... Well, as slowly as I can stand, anyway. I'm a pretty newbie author with fluff. XD**

**Gotta go, I just found an assignment I totally forgot about... that's due soon. OH THE HORROR! So, in sympathy to my plight, review? XD (and yes, I will squeeze Longchamp in. Don't worry!)**


	14. Stupid Cow and Poison Scorpion

**After a request, I've decided to make the first bit with " for talking and the rest with my normal format, just for people to decide if they like it or not. So… reviews for ideas?**

**Sorry for being late! I had tests. Yes, school is taking up my time. So… My chapter for my other story will be up soon too. ^^ And I tried to update yesterday, but Document Manager wouldn't work. So I added another scene in, that's why it's so long. =="**

**Thank you to all my reviewers! It shot up to 181 and I was like O_o and died of happiness. Loves you too, my sister, for beta-ing and adding random sentences here and there…**

**And without further ado… enjoy! (beware, there may be typos)**

* * *

After starting the day off with a bang (literally) and with Gokudera and Yamamoto (and me) joining Tsuna's family, the day felt irreparably boring. I mean, I was relearning things that I'd learnt two years ago, Gokudera went to restock dynamite so there were no teacher yelling at Gokudera to "stop-being-so-annoying" incidences to make class interesting, and Yamamoto and Tsuna were being their normal selves.

It was Thursday though, so I left at the end of the day after saying a bye to Hana and Kyoko.

Leaning on the wall of the school waiting for Grey to pick me up, I watched students walk past me chatting happily. Sometimes I was surprised that there was so much more happening in this world than Tsuna. In the books it was Tsuna's story and background. When I was actually in here, there was so much more depth. Everyone has a story after all, cheesy as it sounds.

Grey came by in a normal car (I used some of that money from the Yoshikuni case to get a normal car – Toyota, actually – so I didn't need to drive around in a limo) and I happily slid in.

"Good day, Miss?"

"Very good day, Grey."

Grey hummed in response as we smoothly pulled away from the school. "One of your friends called. You forgot your mobile phone at home." I raised my eyebrows in surprise and checked my pockets.

"Oh yeah, I did! Who was it?"

"Setsuna."

"Ah." I nodded. We had a habit of texting each other in class.

"She asked if you have any free time on Saturday to go out and do something together." I grinned guiltily.

"True, I haven't seen them for a while. Okay then, I'll go. I better reply to her when I get back home."

"No need, I have your mobile phone in that compartment there." Grey gestured to the front compartment and I smiled even wider. Bending over to get the phone, I turned my head to look at Grey.

"Grey, you seem to always know what I need."

"Of course."

I shook my head while texting Setsuna, replying with an okay. A reply came nearly immediately (Setsuna texts way faster than I ever could; she would probably beat me even if we were texting in English instead of Japanese) with a "YAY!" and a question on why I was so late in texting back. So I texted back saying I had forgotten my phone. She texted back a laughing face, and just when I was going to text back with one of my emoticons, Grey started to talk again.

"Miss, Anise-sama also called you today. She told you to check your email when you get back."

"Huh? Spartan Teacher Number Two?" I paled. It couldn't be… "Not more training exercises?" I squeaked out, half dreading the answer. Grey chuckled before composing himself.

"No."

I sighed in relief and slumped in my chair. And after turning a few corners, we got back to the hotel car park where the usual procedure took place. Getting into my apartment (apartment to me sounded better than _suite_) I immediately headed for the computer room. Spartan Teacher Number Two knew _everything; _I bet that she would know if I didn't head for the computer room immediately or not.

She was just scary like that.

Booting up the computer and clicking up the email box thing, I read her message.

_-To: Number 50-_

_- Subject: When do you think you can keep lazing around?-_

_-Alice. I heard just now that you haven't really taken up jobs yet. It's good and all that you took a job that got Yoshikuni on our side, he's one of the conservative types. But your hotel stay needs money, and I know __**I**__ can't be responsible for paying all of that. Brighteyes are stationed around the world for a reason__, and __you're the only__ one__ stationed in Japan. _

_When are you going to start working? I recommend you to start listing the prices and requests from the people swarming you (_Hey wait… how did she know that?), _and do the most expensive ones first._

_And drive up the prices. We need money. __DO NOT DEAL IN BUSINESS THAT DEALS WITH LESS THAN MILLIONS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES._

_And have you been keeping up with your training? I heard something very interesting from Jack. If I don't get a progress report on your income and your training progress with your grades, I will be paying a personal visit to rectify matters. __I will also pay you a personal visit if you ever happen to ever take on a case that paid less than two million._

_From your tutor_

_Anise, Number 26-_

I stared at the screen.

What? We certainly _don't_ need money. In my opinion, we already had too much. But of course Spartan Teacher Number Two wouldn't think so (she was, after all, in charge of the family's finances). And I knew about that stationed thing. We had Brighteyes stationed in nearly every country; there was even one in Antarctica (I know, how random is that?).

But first things first…

"Grey…" I called out, depressed. Grey materialised in his professional butler way. "Can you do me a favour?"

"Of course, Miss."

"Go down to those rich-man hordes and make a list of requests of what they want me to do, prioritising the ones with the most money. And say that to them so that they offer more money. And tell them that I don't deal with anything less than two million." Which was an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. Better not do anything that'll make Spartan Teacher Two angry though…

Grey, to his credit, just nodded. Even he knew the danger of man hordes.

I feel evil now. To send such a wonderful guy like Grey into the pits of human greed…

"I'll go down now." I grimaced.

"Be careful."

"Of course."

"Don't get slaughtered."

"Of course."

I sighed and shook my head as I watched Grey walk smoothly to the elevator and pressed the down button. Twirling on my swivel chair sucking on a grape lollipop, I sighed again.

I'll start work on Sunday or something… Looking out the window to the view of a beautiful sunset, I slowly got up from my chair.

Better pack my books for tomorrow…

* * *

The next day was Friday. I expected it to be normal (after all, it had been relatively calm… relatively), but then, that was when I forgot that right after Reborn, Lambo comes. Ranked first in Fuuta's list of most annoying Mafioso, thief, attention lover, five year old failure trainee Hitman with a mission to become Reborn's, err… rival.

Then of course Bianchi, Poison Scorpion, secret sadist, Gokudera's sister, head over heels in love with Reborn and dead set on murdering Tsuna, who was a failure and future Tenth Vongola boss.

But on that blissful peaceful morning, I forgot all about that. I tried to take in the sights and forget about that huge ass list on my bed listing jobs, deluded myself that Reborn hadn't come yet, made myself think that maybe it could be a normal day.

Of course, nothing can be that simple.

I walked into school, into the classroom and put my bag onto my desk without much trouble. After two minutes, Gokudera came in and put his bag onto his desk, not noticing me and glaring at everyone else (I'm glad I brought my sunglasses). And then two minutes after _that_, Gokudera's ears perked up.

'I hear Juudaime's footsteps!'

I stared at him incredulously. No way could that be true… Gokudera couldn't be as obsessed as that, right?

I was proven wrong when Gokudera practically skipped to the door (wow, mood swings much? He was glaring… two seconds ago) and waited with a beam on his face.

Getting up slowly and I walked to the door as well, looking at it curiously. No way, no way, no no no _way_ can the next person that opens the door be Tsuna.

The door opened, and a troubled looking Tsuna stood in the doorway. My mouth dropped in surprise.

Literally.

Established then. Gokudera had supersonic hearing. As expected from the Vongola Tenth's right hand man, eh?

'Good morning, Juudaime!' Gokudera said sunnily.

Tsuna looked positively horrified that Gokudera was there. 'Hiie! G-gokudera-kun!' He looked around frantically, hunching his shoulders. 'Stop calling me that!'

Gokudera straightened up with a frown and with a final tone, he said in his sternest voice 'No, Juudaime is Juudaime.'

'But…'

I reached the door the same time as Yamamoto reached Tsuna.

'Yo, Tsuna! You're still playing the Mafia game?' Yamamoto said with his happy face.

'Tsuna.' I said at the same time in my normal voice, taking off my sunglasses. Gokudera jumped a little at hearing my voice right behind him, but shrugged it off.

He _would_ know of the Brighteye rumours about being "undetectable".

'It looks like fun, let me in too!' Yamamoto continued, stopping with his trademark shiny teeth grin. Tsuna looked at the both of us helplessly.

'Alice, Y-Yamamoto.' Then Tsuna's face comically blanked as he processed that Yamamoto _still_ thought it was a game (in true Yamamoto style, I must add). And in that moment of inattention in Tsuna's part, Gokudera started his non-existent rivalry with Yamamoto. As Gokudera ranted about how Yamamoto was trying to steal the right-hand man spot, I laughed quietly to the side with Yamamoto staring at Gokudera weirdly. Tsuna immediately snapped out of it.

'Let's just… forget about all the subordinate and boss stuff!' He tried to placate everybody (which didn't work). Gokudera and Yamamoto didn't budge.

'Come on; let me into your friend group too! Alice is in it, isn't she?' I blinked. Why drag the innocent little bystander into this?

'Don't drag me into this.' I said in my most final voice. 'You two continue your friendly spat without me.' Yamamoto grinned at me, and Gokudera took it personally (Gokudera should take chill pills).

'She was personally picked by Reborn-san, she's different!'

I raised my eyebrows. Yamamoto laughed.

'Oh, that baby at Tsuna's house?'

'Yes!'

'Let me join, the more the merrier, right?' Tsuna drooped.

'Yamamoto...' he said exasperatedly. And the voice that came next made me smile.

'You guys… are in the way,' said the dry voice of Kurokawa Hana. I went up to the doorway and stuck my head out, grinning.

'Hi, Hana, Kyoko.' They both smiled and waved. Tsuna visibly stiffened when I said _Kyoko. _I smiled. Ah, the days of young love… He mechanically turned around to see a glowing Kyoko.

'Good morning, Tsuna-kun!' She said happily. Tsuna turned red.

'G-good morning, Kyoko-chan!' Then he smiled happily. I couldn't appreciate the cuteness of his expression (hey wait… why was Tsuna acting so relaxed towards me? He was afraid of me only two days ago. Probably Reborn's influence), I was too busy staring at his leg.

Was a really small kid clinging to Tsuna's pants?

I stared at the kid, who was hanging on to Tsuna's leg like a koala.

Cow suit.

Afro bigger than his head.

Grape candies.

Snot and tears all over the place.

The tell-tale pink grenade in his hair.

I sighed. My days of peace are officially over. Lambo, the most annoying Mafioso. Peace and afros don't mix with grenades. After staring at him for the next seven seconds, I glanced around. Was I the _only_ one who noticed Lambo?

'Is that little boy your little brother?' Kyoko asked, pointing down. I blinked at her; Kyoko was amazingly observant at times. Tsuna's eyes followed to where Kyoko was pointing.

He jumped back. 'Hiie! Since when?' I bit back a snort. Gokudera, with a dead-pan expression, looked down. Yamamoto looked down with a grin.

'Who is he?'

'Cute!'

Kyoko's obvious maternal instincts kicked in, and she crouched down. Hana backed away, and rushed past me into the classroom. I smirked at her in obvious amusement, she glared back and huffed to her seat.

Of course, she was "allergic" to children…

'How old are you, little boy?' Kyoko asked angelically. She was practically oozing with cute and pureness. Fan-boys appeared from nowhere and sighed happily. I resisted the urge to pat her head. Kyoko was so cute…

'Is it really okay to bring him to school?' I questioned, since Hana seemed to be out-of-order shuddering off her hives at the back of the classroom. 'You know what breaking school rules means…' I trailed off ominously. Tsuna immediately looked panicked and tried to tug Lambo off.

'No! It's not like that!' Tsuna said desperately. I snickered, where Kyoko looked at me with a reprimanding look.

'Now, Alice-chan, that's not nice – '

The hallway was suddenly silent. The air dropped a few degrees. The wind stopped blowing. Clouds stopped moving. A great looming shadow seemed to encase all the students in the hallway because...

Hibari was there.

…

Okay, it wasn't that dramatic. But it was freaking _Hibari._ I shoved the sunglasses into a random back pocket, safely out of sight. Safe!

Tsuna was the first person to act. 'I'm sorry! I'll return him right away!' He ran towards the stairs. I looked at him in surprise. Was he already growing a backbone? Only yesterday would he have melted into a puddle of fear.

I nodded in approval. Reborn coming to him was for the best after all.

Gokudera started running after him, calling Juudaime all the way, and Yamamoto waved with his unbroken arm.

'Come back before class starts!'

I watched next to Yamamoto as mutters continued to echo along the corridor.

'Hibari-san is so scary…'

'He's so creepy…'

'I wonder what Hibari-san would do…'

Then they all froze simultaneously. I hid behind Yamamoto and watched.

'How long are you going to crowd there?' Hibari said, his voice echoing, exuding dark aura waves with thunder claps and carnivorous dinosaurs all with eyes that said "I'm going to bite you to death…"

At the image of dinosaur with tonfas biting everything to death made me nearly chuckle. Then Hibari said his catch-phrase.

'I'll bite you to death.'

And at that, I couldn't take it anymore (imagining Hibari in one of those rainbow kids' show Tyrannosaurus Rex costumes growling "I'll bite you to death" is too much for me to handle), and I rushed into the classroom with my hands clapped in my mouth trying to stop myself laughing.

I blinked. I went from wariness to hysterics in a few moments.

…

Heh. I hate puberty. And hormones.

I waited in my seat like the good student I was (Yamamoto was talking to his own friends; he had a social life after all), and ignored the sudden flashes of lightning which signified that ten years later Lambo had come.

Instead, I concentrated on the teacher's face (still a bit hysterical inside) while Tsuna had to, yet again, apologise to the teacher for being late.

Poor Dame-Tsuna.

And we even had a maths test.

* * *

Lunch… was lunch. I was trying to sit on my lonesome again until Reborn suddenly appeared under my desk and kind of forced me to go eat on the roof with Tsuna and the others. Tsuna looked pleasantly surprised (I wonder what Reborn said to him… he didn't even hiie and hide under the nearest table) and I sat down between him and Yamamoto.

Yamamoto didn't disappear to train immediately at lunch because of his broken arm, Gokudera was being Gokudera, and Tsuna looked happy that he actually had friends to eat with him. I grinned through my mouthful of takoyaki.

'This morning was such a mess…' Tsuna sighed. 'I was late and got scolded.'

'Even though it was just to help a kid.' Yamamoto added, trying to console Tsuna. Then he held up his bento, flashing a smile. 'Oi, Tsuna, help me unwrap my bento? I don't have two arms. Haha!'

'O-of course, Yamamoto!' He reached out for it and started unwrapping it, picking at the knot. Gokudera stopped unwrapping his canteen bought onigiri to glare at Yamamoto.

'Don't call Juudaime to do such mundane things!'

'Gokudera, its fine…' Tsuna tried, and failed to prevent yet another Gokudera outburst. He sighed and shoved the bento back in front of Yamamoto, then went to the work of unpicking his own bento. I just sat back and watched.

Yamamoto and Gokudera outbursts are funny.

'Why are you even here, baseball nut?' growled Gokudera, to which the response in Yamamoto was only a laugh.

'Why, its fine isn't it?' he grinned, unfazed at it all and picking up chopsticks with his good hand. I grinned at his easy-going personality. Not many around that could brush off stuff easily these days. Yamamoto looked up at the sky. 'Eating lunch under the clear blue sky is the best, right?' Yamamoto looked at me next to him and Tsuna, who was sitting kind of behind me from Yamamoto's view.

'Yes, right!' Tsuna mumbled, nodding, clenching chopsticks between his teeth.

'Mhmm…' I nodded in agreement before suddenly sniffing the air. I wrinkled my nose. That smelt horrible. 'What's that smell?'

Noxious purple fumes were rising from Tsuna's lunchbox. A few random crows that suddenly randomly decided to fly into the random purple fumes dropped randomly _right into my lap._

I stared at them. They couldn't stare back at me (being fainted and all). I delicately picked them off my lap, ignoring Gokudera's blanched face at a particular _someone's _familiar cooking, Tsuna's screams of WHAT THE HELL? And Yamamoto's laughter. Coincidence? I think not.

'You better not eat that.' Reborn's voice came from the roof of the stairway doorway. We all looked up simultaneously. 'You'll go to heaven with one bite.'

Reborn looked annoyingly smug that he had (literally) kicked me up here. I swear, I'm going to get him back from making me fly nearly half way up to the ceiling and out of the doorway of the safe, unbothersome classroom.

Tsuna looked up at Reborn.

'Reborn!'

No duh, Tsuna. There totally wasn't a smirking baby up there stroking a lime green chameleon.

'Ciaossu.' He acknowledged us and looked up towards the other roof entrance. 'Come out. I know you're there, Bianchi.'

The door opened on its own, and a _really_ pretty girl was revealed, leaning on the wall in this casually sexy way or something, having a smirk that nearly (_nearly_) matched Reborn's. She looked about eighteen really, younger than I had expected.

'Ah, that girl from this morning!' Tsuna cried, already on his feet. Gokudera's face filled with horror and thoughts of _I THOUGHT I FINALLY ESCAPED HER! _floated visibly past me before he finally keeled over after muttering a pain-laced voice of…

Of...

Wait for it…

'B-big sister.'

Tsuna looked at the good looking Gokudera. Then looked at the good looking Bianchi. Then looked at Gokudera. Then Bianchi. Then finally he gave a disbelieving shout.

'Big sister? !'

Bianchi walked over slowly, then stopped right in front of Tsuna and Gokudera.

'It's been awhile, Hayato. Some would think you're even avoiding me!' She chuckled and shook her head at Gokudera, who was clutching at his stomach. I grimaced in sympathy.

That looked like it hurt.

'Ciaossu, Bianchi.' Reborn said to her.

Bianchi's response was immediate. Head immediately tilted back, blushing cheeks, widened eyes, the whole deal. I shook my head.

Heh. You would think she was a paedophile or something.

'Reborn!' She immediately got out of her confident stance and took to a lovesick teenager waiting for a confession or something. She fiddled with her hair, talking to the floor. 'I've come to take you back, Reborn. Let's do some large-scale jobs again. The place you belong to is the dark and dangerous underworld after all!' She looked up hopefully.

'I've told you before, Bianchi.' Reborn said (to soften his rejection. I think. Reborn didn't seem like one to go about things in a round-a-bout way though). 'I have a job in raising Tsuna.'

Bianchi's eyes immediately started to tear, and she pointed to Tsuna. I slowly got up to join near Yamamoto, who was safely out of the way in the background with things. Yamamoto was eating his lunch.

'Eating sushi?'

'Yeah. Gokudera's sister is pretty, isn't she?'

'Very.'

Our mundane conversation was overtaken by the drama taking place about two steps in front of us. I wonder if I'll be able to take one of Bianchi's attacks. Maybe. Probably not, actually…

Anyway, if she randomly starts attacking, Yamamoto was the second strongest fighter in the school, isn't he? He would probably be able to dodge Bianchi's attacks. So I'll just have to be somewhere behind him if she starts attacking.

It's good to have strong friends.

But let's not jinx myself. Why would Bianchi randomly attack me anyway? I continued to watch the proceedings.

'Poor Reborn! That means if the Vongola Juudaime doesn't die in some horrible accident, Reborn would never be free!'

'Eh?' Tsuna's face was more shocked than horrified. And after a few seconds, the horror caught up to him. Poor Tsuna, he had been having a relatively calm life until now…

'I'll wait for it. After I kill the Vong– I mean, if the Juudaime dies, I'll come and bring you back, Reborn.'

She started walking away in shock induced silence. At the doorway, she looked back (probably to eye Reborn and guilt trip him into coming with her: not a chance of _that_ happening) and scanned the group. And just when she was about to leave, her eyes landed on me and immediately widened into hate.

Stalking towards me. Bianchi was stalking towards _me_ (me! Why _me?) _with a murderous looking pizza in her hand.

What the heck?

… Did I jinx myself when I said she wasn't going to attack me randomly?

Heh. Probably.

I just had bad luck like that.

'Brighteye!' She growled, eyes flashing in the way that you _knew_ that she was actually angry.

'Whoa!' I stumbled backwards to avoid the purple pizza of death and nearly got caught in the purple _beef pie_ of death. Where does she put those things? 'What did I ever do to you? I believe it's the first time we've ever met one another.' I managed to say as calmly as I could in a dire situation such as this.

'Nothing can beat the power of love!' Bianchi growled, throwing another pizza. I dodged again, and moved farther from Yamamoto so purple specks of death sludge wouldn't get into his sushi bento box.

I blinked and did the logical response. 'Umm, so?'

And for some reason, Bianchi got even angrier and tried to shove a plate full of purple death lasagne near my face. Reborn took to himself to give an explanation (with that perma-smirk of his on his face. I bet he was enjoying this).

'Bianchi hates Brighteyes.' I body slammed myself onto the floor to avoid two dangerous flying pots of _something_ (if the poison didn't do me in, those heavy metal pots would. Wow, double edged attack!) from hitting my head and body. I groaned as I got up and back flipped away from seven purple clams of… yeah, death.

'Care to tell me why?' I grunted, landing hard on my feet, and took to myself in running away. Bianchi saw my plan, unfortunately, and whipped up three pizza projectiles.

'A Brighteye once showed her that she believed money trumps love and she's hated Brighteyes ever since.'

'Nice.' I jumped, tucking my knees in and looked back at Reborn. 'Remind me to kill whoever it was later.' Then I turned my eyes on a crazy looking (though still beautiful, amazingly enough) Bianchi. Now that I knew the reason of her… err… wild fury-ness, what to do about it?

I grimaced at the lie forming in my head. It was needed. I will not regret this.

I stopped dodging and put on my most soppy sentimental face, biting my tongue hard enough to make my eyes water.

Prepare myself... three... two... one...

'Bianchi, I know exactly how you feel!' I added in my most sentimental voice (which wasn't much, really), but Bianchi stopped. I took this as a good sign (eyeing another two of those dangerous pots of _something_ warily) and kept blabbing my mouth off. 'I believe in the power of love too!'

I debated on adding "ALL HAIL THE POWER OF LOVE" but thought that would be overdoing it. I screwed up my nose, pretending that I was trying to control my "tears". Oh gosh, the stuff I'm spitting out… I hurried to console myself. Yes, it's for a good cause. My life is on the line!

'My mother fell in love with my father,' I said in a sad voice, adding a sniff to make it more dramatic, 'but they couldn't marry because of their difference in rank. So they agonised for four years trying to find a way to join in matrimony (matrimony, really? Who says that nowadays? Bianchi's starting to listen though, that's good) when they found that my mother was pregnant with me!'

Bianchi gasped.

'…Some things happened, and my father's evil brother tried to get to my father through my mother, who nearly couldn't handle it because of her traumatic past but my father saved her!' I nodded and opened my hands wide, trying to ignore Gokudera's pain-filled looks of _what __type of idiotic __shit are you spewing_ and kept on making the story.

'My father was the only one who had taken care of my mother, even though she was the kindest most beautiful girl in the world, but he was the handsome cool cold type and would only give flashes of affection, but it was enough to melt my mother's beautiful, unsoiled, pure, wonderful, amazing heart…'

Was Reborn laughing?

'…and there were so many factors in the way that wanted to tear my mother and father apart! My mother being buried under an earthquake, my father getting beaten up and kidnapped, my father's family finding out that my mother was actually their greatest enemy's great great great granddaughter... there were so many things that prevented them from marrying every single time!'

I wiped away a fake tear. Bianchi looked moved and took it as a good sign.

'My delicate mother nearly fell into depression thinking that they could never be together but my attractive, good looking, strikingly dashing father lifted her up and said "You're the love of my life!" and she recovered and sang with her angelic voice as a thank you but then…'

Raise my voice, bite my tongue, clasp my hands together, glance at the sky… What? What the heck should I add? Think soap operas, soap operas...

'…a beautiful supermodel wanted to steal my father away jealous of my mother's chaste, unadulterated one-in-a-trillion natural beauty and even went through plastic surgery to get him, but it didn't work and she tried to _poison_ my gentle mother but my father saved her and then she tried to kidnap her and blackmail my father but he saved my mother again and my mother realised that…'

That what? Think bad fanfiction! I glanced around desperately. Even Yamamoto was looking at me funny now!

'… no matter what happened he loved her more than… than… than… err… anything and so they helped each other get over their childhood traumas and eloped to a faraway country and married, linking themselves as husband and wife for eternity and finally had me a while afterwards!'

I ended my story panting with a totally destroyed ego. Was that good enough?

Glancing up at Bianchi, I was shocked to see her sniffing and dabbing her eyes.

'Such a wonderful story!' She stepped forward and embraced me. 'I shouldn't have thought all Brighteyes the same!' I stiffened and pat her back awkwardly.

'Err… it's alright.'

'I wonder if Reborn will ever realise my love for him so that I can sweep him off his feet…'

I ignored the fact that the guy was supposed to sweep the girl off his feet and continued to pat her back.

'Yes, I'm sure he'll come around. I mean, you're one of the most beautiful, gentlest girls I've ever known.' Gokudera gave me another "_You're shitting me"_ look that I ignored again.

Bianchi sniffed.

'I'm sure we can become good friends.'

'Yes.'

'Don't worry, Reborn, I'll come and get you soon!'

She finally sauntered up to the doorway and left, waving a goodbye to me and a blushing one to Reborn (Gokudera, who had been recovering, keeled over from looking at her face again), leaving Tsuna and everyone else in another, yet again, shocked silence.

Yamamoto, the funny guy, was still eating his bento.

'Was that story true, Alice?'

I stared at him.

'No.'

'Oh, I thought it was pretty romantic too! Haha!' I continued staring at him. Yamamoto, a secret romantic. Who knew? Yamamoto turned to Tsuna. 'Gokudera's sister sure is pretty!'

Groans followed his comment, and they looked down to the widely ignored Gokudera.

'Ah, Gokudera-kun! Let's get you to the Nurse's office!'

'Thank you, Juudaime…'

I opted to stay on the roof so that the clear air could wash away all thoughts of Mary-sue romances.

Argh.

* * *

Home EC. I stared at my "cake".

It was burnt. It looked strange. It smelt strange. It _tasted_ strange.

And cooking reminded me of a certain encounter on the roof. And the event that followed…

My father trying to look cool with his beer belly sticking out trying his hardest to lift my mother, who was taller than him by a good few inches, with a beach sunset romantic scene background flew into my head.

I banged my head on the wall.

Must forget. Bang. Forget. Bang. Forget. Bang.

'Alice,' I looked up to see Kyoko, 'you only got a one out of ten for your cooking again…' I cracked a smile. Home EC was the only subject I couldn't pass.

Not surprising. I sucked at cooking.

'I probably should put this in the bin.' I walked towards the bin with my cake. Kyoko looked like she was going to protest with one of her "no, you worked so hard on it!" type of pep speeches, but she took one look at my cake and gave up.

Huh. So it was that bad.

'You can have a slice of mine.' Hana held up her cake, which was coincidentally _purple_. I blanched and shook my head.

'Uh, it's fine. I'll… go to the nurse office.' Hana looked at me, concerned.

'You do look a bit more pale than usual…'

'Yeah. Bye!'

And I rushed out and practically ran to the nurse's office. The nurse was there, surprisingly. I smiled at her.

'Your name?'

'Bright, Alice, first year.'

'Okay, I'll notify your teachers. Go on a bed and rest, not the first one though. There's a person in there.

I nodded and walked towards one of the beds while peeking inside the curtains of the first one.

Oh right… Gokudera was still here wasn't he? I smirked (he gave me a glare) and mouthed the word "Bianchi".

He blanched, and clutched his stomach.

Okay, I feel a bit evil now.

As I lay down on the bed, I thought I heard a distant echo of a person screaming Reborn! It must be my ears. A mutter seemed to come from Gokudera. I opened the curtains to hear him clearer.

'What did you say, Gokudera?'

'I remember, that cow guy from before looked like Romeo!' I raised an eyebrow.

'And who's Romeo?'

'Bianchi's,' I shuddered at her name, 'ex-boyfriend who died of food poisoning after he ditched her!'

'Ah.' I said coherently. What a lovely girlfriend Bianchi was. I tried cracking a joke. They say people bond over laughter, right? 'I wonder how he died.' Gokudera looked incredulously at me. I massaged my temples with a sigh.

Figures no one would get my joke.

'I was joking.' I said plainly.

The door to the nurse office opened and the nurse looked up, surprised. 'My, there are a lot of people coming here today, who is it this time?' She said, smiling.

Tsuna, yet again, in another pair of boxers (orange with yellow polka-dots) came dragging adult Lambo into the office. Gokudera immediately leapt to his feet with a happy grin.

'Juudaime! Did you come to visit me?'

Tsuna looked awkward. 'I just needed a bed…' He trailed off. I hopped off my bed, giving a nod.

'You can put him here.'

'Okay then…'

Lambo stirred (was that even possible after Bianchi's cooking?).

'I hear Alice-nee's voice, but that's impossible… Maybe I'm in heaven already…'

Startled, I looked up. Then my eyes softened. Oh right, I would have died by then. I mentally calculated that Lambo would've have been about ten, or twelve if I ever extorted the two year extension off Bill.

'You're not dead, Lambo. Not yet, anyway.'

Lambo smiled and shifted. 'Missed you, Alice-nee… I-pin still cries you know, since you two were so close…'

What do I say to that? I sat on the bed and stroked some purple goo off his hair.

'Well, you can tell her that I will miss her too. And she'll meet me soon without dying. Oh, and what type of shirt are you _wearing?_' I eyed his chest revealing shirt in distaste.

'Okay… I'll tell her. And that's what you said when I started wearing them… don't they show off my chest well?'

'Err… just talk to I-pin.'

'You always did like I-pin more.'

I patted his head and ignored the curious looks from Tsuna and Gokudera. 'No, I bet I'll like you both evenly.'

Lambo smiled, and suddenly pink smoke came and a noisy baby came into the scene. I immediately retracted my hand.

'Bwahahaha, the great Lambo-sama has appeared! Ooh, is that purple cake on your hand? Let me taste, let me taste! I bet it tastes like grape – urp'

Lambo, who was already getting on my nerves, keeled over from Bianchi poisoning. A shadow came over from the window.

Reborn smirk alert.

'Tsuna, you need to get back for class.' Tsuna sent a panicked look at Lambo.

'But what about him?' He jerked his head awkwardly towards the fainted boy.

'Who?' Reborn's eyes bypassing Lambo entirely. I sighed and left to wash my hands, believing Lambo would be alright. He only ate a speck after all…

'What… what was that?' The terrified nurse stammered. 'That baby… is talking! And, and…'

I left in the middle of her rant. Maybe that's how Shamal got the nurse spot. I mourned the future loss. And she was a nice nurse too, definitely not pervy, at least. As I washed my hands, I sighed. And to think this was only the second day. Things haven't even started heating up yet! I groaned and bashed my head into a randomly placed wall.

I'll never complain about boredom again. I'll be good and try and improve my cooking. I'll, I'll… do something! Anything for normality!

My pleas for normality were unanswered as I heard yet another yell of REBORN! coming from upstairs.

I plead headache. I think I'll just ditch class and call Grey.

As I left the school building, I took extra care to leap over the wall and not exit through the gate.

Hibari might be there. I was too tired to stand another chasing, thank you very much.

I walked towards a café shop (the people looked disapprovingly at me ditching class) and ordered a hot chocolate. At least I got that shopping trip tomorrow to look forward to, with my normal friends. Setsuna and Miwa…

I sat up, determined. I will make tomorrow as normal as possible. Gulping my hot chocolate all in one go, (gah, my throat's burning) because Grey was outside, I tried to be as determined as possible.

Yes, tomorrow will all work out.

I really hope that foreboding feeling in my chest is nothing…

* * *

'Setsuna, Miwa!'

The two girls standing in front of a bright looking corner shopped turned and beamed. Well, Setsuna did, anyway.

'Alice!'

'Alice-chan!'

They jogged over to me. I grinned. Setsuna bent over to hug me, and Miwa smiled and waited her turn.

'Well, isn't it a fine day today?' Setsuna pouted and adjusted her glasses.

'Is that how you address a friend that you haven't met for the past term?'

'Yeah. Did you hit another growth spurt? You're tall now...' I had to squint to look up at her. She grinned.

'You're just small. Midget.' She noogied me. I whacked her arm away and walked to Miwa, ignoring Setsuna's mutterings of "abuse, it's totally abuse". Miwa smiled at me.

'Alice-chan! Do you know what we're doing today? Setsuna called me out to meet you, but she didn't tell me what we were going to do.' I raised my eyebrow and tucked my hands in my pockets.

'Hmm... I don't know either. Setsuna just randomly texted me and told me we were going shopping.' We both simultaneously looked at our glasses wearing friend. The object of our scrutiny recovered instantly when she realised she was in our attention (attention seeker), and grinned.

I did not like that grin.

'Well... We didn't have plans today, and Miwa-chan and I have already been through the shops more than twice already so,' she looked at me, 'I was wondering if we could go to your house, Alice!'

I blinked. Then I turned to the way I've come and sighed, starting to walk in the direction of the hotel with a slouch.

'Fine...' A breeze blew suddenly into the street, swirling up random pieces of plastic and rubbish. I grinned. I came prepared today; I had a jacket to warm my hands. It's nice to be prepared. I heard footsteps, and both Miwa and Setsuna appeared on my left.

'I thought it would take more than that to persuade you... I even wrote down my arguments of why we could go!' She waved random pieces of text filled paper in my face. I shoved them away with a scowl on my face.

'I knew you would badger me the whole day if I said no anyway.'

'Aw, Alice knows me so well!'

'Is it really okay, Alice? Your parents might not like it or something...' I smiled at Miwa and ignored Setsuna.

'Don't worry. I don't have parents... here.' I tacked on the last part hastily. Miwa nodded, smiling.

'That's a relief. If I knew I was going to your house I would've brought a gift.' Noting Miwa's rueful look, I smiled at her.

'It's okay. I'll be the host today. I haven't seen you two for a long time after all, I missed you two, believe it or not.'

I heard a happy shout. I turned around in time to see Setsuna running to Miwa before twirling her around and around. 'Alice finally admits she misses us!' I raised an eyebrow at her behaviour before turning around once again and walking towards... my apartment.

'Anyway, going back to our original topic, we're going to my... house, right?'

'Yeah? So?' Setsuna questioned, and then immediately narrowed her eyes. 'You aren't backing out now, are you? Remember you promised me last year that you would bring me to your house. You did, you did!'

I sighed and restarted.

'I didn't say you_ couldn't_ Setsuna, I just wanted to say I don't live in a house.'

'Oh.'

'I live in an apartment thing. Come on, it's not that far away...'

I started leading again, knowing they would follow. Setsuna was acting more hyper than usual, but maybe it was just me. Miwa was still the same, but a bit louder, which I was very glad about (really, she needs an ego boost).

We've walked for about fifteen minutes, talking about this and that and catching up with each other. It was surprising how much recreational stuff Midori did. And I told them, in which they answered

'Oh, Midori wants us to have a life outside of studying. That's why we have so many plays and culture stuff, so we can learn but have fun at the same time!'

'Yeah, Setsuna showed a talent in acting.' Miwa added. 'I'm more of a scriptwriter.' Setsuna grinned and nudged Miwa.

'Aw, don't be modest. Alice, Miwa-chan's scripts _always_ gets chosen! And well,' she scratched her cheek bashfully, 'I guess I'm not that bad at acting either...' I grinned.

'Well, anyone as crazy as you in your class?'

'There's this strange girl called Haru.'

'Ah. Interesting.'

'We've become friendly acquaintances. But of course she's not as close as you, Alice!'

I rolled my eyes (really, only Setsuna could make me feel exasperated but still cheerful) and slapped her on the shoulder.

'Are we nearly there yet, Alice?'

I turned to Miwa with a sheepish smile. 'Well...' I started. 'We've actually been where I live for a long time. You know this huge long fence?' I waved to the fence we've been walking along for the past few minutes, with the other side having luxurious looking gardens and pools and other rich stuff. 'Well, I live in the hotel that owns it, but the entrance should be around here...'

As Miwa and Setsuna stared, I approached the gate guard who, of course, immediately recognised me.

'Brighteye-san! Are you bringing friends?' I grinned at the gate person. He never changed, but a nice old person like him always lifted spirits.

'Yeah.'

'Nice to know.' He smiled warmly at Setsuna and Miwa, who were hanging back. Then he looked back at me. 'Going through the car park again?'

'Probably.'

'Okay then, I'll open the gate for you.' He walked to the box thing he worked in and with a few presses, the big door opened up. 'Here you go, little miss and friends.'

Setsuna and Miwa seemed too in awe to say anything, so I said their thanks for them (it's always nice to be good to staff) and shoved them in, leading them towards the car park entrance instead of the main one.

Setsuna jerked out of her reverie instantly. 'Alice-chan, the gatekeeper was so cool, but why aren't we going into the main entrance? It looks so posh...' I dead panned at Setsuna's dreamy eyed expression and waved my hands vaguely.

'My family's a bit well known, and well, rich people like to suck up to richer people, so, umm... yeah.'

Setsuna immediately laughed. 'I've never seen you so awkward before! It's so cute!' I scowled at her.

'Why do you seem much more bright and happy today? It's giving me the creeps.'

Miwa stepped in for her. 'Setsuna's missed you a lot, Alice! She's been talking for days about this. And of course, she was curious about where you live.' I blinked at her, then looked at Setsuna. Then I turned around and continued walking to the car park.

'Just don't act so enthusiastic. I'll be here for a long while yet.'

I sighed as Miwa and Setsuna shared giggled, both exclaiming something like "she's embarrassed!" I was, a bit, but I was more apprehensive. If they were amazed at the gate keeper, how would the stand looking at my freaking _suite?_

'Umm… here.' I waved to the underground car park. 'We'll enter from the elevator in the car park. Yeah.' I nodded to myself and rushed to call Grey. As I muttered into the phone (Grey got my message after a few seconds), I led them past rich and expensive cars. They both kept gasping, and Miwa knew, unexpectedly, a lot about them.

I didn't know what she was spouting really, and neither did Setsuna, for that matter. Something about diesel, or four cylinder, or something else mechanical.

Miwa caught us staring at her and blushed.

'Well… I really like cars.' I shrugged and continued the way through the dimly lit place and stopped in front of the elevator doors. And at exactly the right time, the elevator dinged and Grey stepped through.

'Miss.'

'Grey! On time as usual.'

'Oh, butler-san!'

'Hello!'

Grey smiled at them both, and ushered us inside. We went to the seventh level this time to swap elevators. Miwa and Setsuna looked at the carpet and their muddy shoes guiltily.

'I'm not sure if this was a good idea now.'

I waved away their expressions. 'I felt the same way. Now, we need to get to the other elevator for my… apartment.' I led them to another shiny elevator. Miwa looked at me curiously (Setsuna was busy inspecting the pot plants, weird girl).

'Isn't your place on this level?'

'No, I have the penthouse.'

Miwa looked like she nearly fainted.

* * *

'Don't touch that!'

'Why?' Setsuna whined, going near the door to the computer room.

'Delicate instruments in there worth millions.' I blankly stated, looking for Setsuna's reaction. Setsuna immediately backed away and just went to open another door. 'Ooh, Miwa, look! The bathroom is so _pretty~'_

Miwa was having the more normal reaction (Setsuna was just like; nice place! And went around exploring) and sat nervously on the sofa.

'Are you sure it's okay to let Setsuna do that?' I shrugged.

'Yeah. If she doesn't open the computer room, its fine.' Miwa looked at me unsurely, and I sighed. 'Relax! Look at the view! Drink some tea! Do some yoga!' Miwa laughed at my pathetic attempt to joke. At least there was someone who appreciated my jokes then…

There was a crash, and Miwa froze. I sighed and bashed my head against the wall (why did Miwa seem to relax looking at me bashing my head against a wall?) and called out to Grey.

'What did she break?'

'Oh, just an antique vase.'

'Gosh, just when I had _told_ her to be careful…'

Setsuna's voice floated from the other side of the apartment/suite thing. 'Sorry, sorry! I broke this expensive looking golden vase thing! I hope its fake…'

'It's real.' I called out.

I could imagine Setsuna's blanched face.

'But it won't cost you, don't worry.'

An audible sigh of relief.

I smiled and stretched on the sofa next to Miwa's. Looking at her, I found she was more… relaxed looking.

'Watching you bash your head is amazingly calming, Alice-chan! You haven't changed at all!'

Raising an eyebrow, I said nothing but yawn. 'Anything you want to do?'

'Not much. I had just wanted to talk to you, after all.'

'Let's catch up then.' We both smiled and winced at the same time from another crash from Setsuna's side and the repeated "sorry" that came after. I continued, looking out the balcony window. Miwa followed suit. 'Well, you haven't changed and Setsuna hasn't changed. Sometimes change is surprisingly hard to get.'

'I'm glad for that.'

She and I looked at each other and laughed, (for no reason, I didn't really know why I laughed), but it was relaxing. Miwa and Setsuna had just erased half a year's of stress off me.

Amazing.

* * *

It was Sunday. Setsuna left after three broken vases that I didn't even know existed (though she was cheerful and joined our reminiscing session halfway through), Miwa seemed happy to have talked to me (she made me promise to go to her house on Thursdays for the sake of old times), and I came out of the whole ordeal surprisingly happy.

And then I woke up with that huge list of two million dollar jobs in my face.

I rubbed my eyes.

Heh. I couldn't even catch _one_ break.

Well, I thought as I munched through my pancakes, better get to work.

* * *

**I hope you enjoyed that. ^^ I'll be seeing you all next chapter (approx. next fortnight, though if I'm totally and utterly interested in writing, or reviews guilt trip me into writing, there might be one next week) and so please tell me if it was good or not? I wanted to add a manga scene, then decided I shouldn't because I would make you wait longer and that's not good. XD**

**Characters aren't developed here. No realism at all. I was trying crack, though it didn't seem to work. *sigh***

**So… REVIEW! *wannabe evil laughter* Ohohohohohoho…**


	15. And she falls sick,,,

**Well guys, I know this is a week late. So… I made it long again! Ahahaha! *nervous laughter***

**And because people seemed to like it, I'm officially using " instead of '. Rejoice peoples!**

**Well, pairing choices are also in the bottom author's note. ^_^**

**Thank you for your reviews! I'm truly happy. I get so excited reading them it's not funny. ==" And thank you for my sister for reading my chapter when she was supposed to do hw, and favouriters and story-alerters (though reviewers are the most awesome!)**

**Please enjoy, I'll stop my nattering now…**

* * *

I wasn't feeling well on Monday. I blame it on that old geezer I gave information to yesterday all for the sake of getting the money Spartan Teacher Number Two demanded. He sneezed in my face!

The teacher at the front straightened up the stack of papers he was holding, and looked up. "I'm giving back last week's maths test now."

There were immediate panicked looks, and the teacher smiled to reassure us all. "Most of you did well in your test, and there were two students who got one hundred percent. Bright Alice."

Almost everyone smiled at me when I walked slowly towards the teacher, noting the whispers of 'as expected' from my peers. Yamamoto laughed and gave me a thumbs up, Tsuna smiled at me. The teacher, already used to my slowness (I had a reason this time!), just shrugged it off knowing I was a kind-of slow person when there were no life-threatening dangers around.

"Thank you, sensei." He smiled at me and looked at the next paper in his hands.

"Gokudera Hayato."

Cue delighted gasps from the girls in our class. "He's handsome _and _smart!" An overly loud whisper echoed through the classroom. Gokudera sauntered up, hands in his pockets (oh, I can so imagine the teacher asking himself _why_ are the bright students in the class so… contrary) and giving a bad ass image.

"Congratulations."

Gokudera grimaced at the paper and slowly walked back to his desk, me following him (I knew I had a packet of tissues somewhere…). Then I realised something strange; when Tsuna congratulated him, he didn't immediately fly into a happy cloud of 'Juudaime congratulated me!'

He just smiled kind of tiredly and walked to his seat. I raised an eyebrow but shrugged it off.

I didn't really know Gokudera that well yet. Whatever, he had his male PMS all the time.

Right now, my blocked nose was priority.

* * *

At lunch, my fan club was hovering over me.

"Alice-sama! Do you need a towel?"

"You look sick, Alice-sama!"

"You have to take care of yourself!"

I scowled and turned my head away, immediately getting concerned noises from my fan club.

They were such mother hens, I swear. It's kind of cute (at least they weren't pervy fans like Kyoko's) but I seriously didn't need it! Yes sure, my face wasn't deathly pale for once, and I did look kind of dry but I was fine!

Standing up, I prepared to give them a great big solid smile telling them to 'bug off'.

Wait, scratch that. I _tried _to stand up.

I stumbled on my feet, and _nearly_ crashed to the floor, _nearly_ meaning that my concerned fan club kind of all dived under me to, I don't know, cushion my fall or something. Which was sweet of them, but didn't they know that an elbow to your spine or a knee to your leg was more painful than landing directly on the nice _flat_ floor?

Holding a hand to my eyes (ah, this is the only time I'm actually appreciating having cold hands), I grimaced. Feeling a little queasy there…

The fan club all helped me stand up at once, and whisked me off to the Nurse room. I tried to ignore the concerned stares I was getting (especially from Tsuna and Yamamoto. Gokudera was still wrapped up in his PMS) and then next thing I knew, I was already on the nurse bed.

"Sensei! Alice-sama nearly collapsed!"

The nurse, politely ignoring the use of sama, frowned and came towards me with a thermometer.

"Let me take your temperature, Bright." I nodded a little tiredly. After half a minute or so, the thermometer beeped and she took it out from under my arm. "Oh dear! You've got a thirty nine degrees fever going on there!"

Chuckling at her usage of 'Oh dear!' (Who used that anymore?), I immediately regretted it when I started coughing. A cup of water was thrust into my face from a concerned fan club member.

"Thank you."

He stepped back with a happy smile.

"I'm going to call your house for your parents, okay?"

I sat a little straighter and tried to stop her, as I full well knew that Grey would _not_ be in the apartment and that if she wanted to call my _apartment_ she would need to go through a whole lot of 'who is Bright? We only have Brighteye' and _that's_ not good.

"No need."

I looked up to see Grey's old wrinkly face smiling down at me.

"Grey."

"Miss. You shouldn't have come to school today."

"Eh… school's interesting?" I rasped. Grey shook his head and smiled at the boys around me.

"Are all these people your friends?"

I looked at them and their hopeful (but annoying; at least they meant well) faces. I sighed and nodded. "Yes."

They beamed and straightened up. Grey shook his head and picked me up piggyback style.

"Och Miss, you're getting a little heavy for this."

I whacked Grey gently on the back of his head.

"You old jiji."

Grey was about to tow me off back to the _apartment_ when the nurse coughed. "You have to sign and indicate who you are, Bright-san," she said, obviously thinking he was my dad or grandpa or something.

"No, I'm not related to her. Call me Grey." He took the pen and signed it on the form she proffered, supporting me with one arm.

I mentally whistled at that. I always knew Grey was a superman in the making. And I _knew_ I wasn't light. I ate too many of those fried hash browns for my own good.

"Well, have a good day Miss," Grey said with his professional butler smile to the nurse and walked away with me on his back, leaving the fan boys to wonder about _who _Grey would be if he wasn't my grandpa.

As Grey walked down the corridor through gawking students, I thought I saw two beady eyes looking at me from the fire extinguisher. I gave a tired peace sign. In response, the eyes twinkled and disappeared.

* * *

The first day was boring, I had nothing to do. I wondered what Tsuna and co. were doing…

"_REBORN! Save Haru with my Dying Will!" _

_Tsuna dived into the water with his ankles doing an impossible propeller motion._

The second day the same.

"Grey," I whined, "I want to eat hash browns! I don't want to drink any more chicken soup!" Grey raised an eyebrow at me and I immediately starting slurping. Grey was scary when he was annoyed…

"_Hiie! Hibari-san!"_

"_Oh, there's another one. But isn't the annoying girl with the sunglasses with you this time?"_

"_A-Alice-san? She's sick!" Hibari raised an eyebrow and calmly walked towards the trash to throw them out the window. Tsuna's high-pitched voice screamed (quietly). "What are you doing with Yamamoto and Gokudera?"_

On the fourth day of being sick, something radically changed with my diet.

Instead of chicken soup, I got congee.

Wonderful.

Was that Grey I hear laughing outside my room?

_I-pin sat, tied there with an angry looking expression on her face trying to see her target. He looked a little blurry…_

"_Here." Reborn gave her thick glasses and Tsuna's face suddenly cleared. Looking frantically, she saw that Tsuna and her target looked nothing like one another (except the hair… but she only recognised people through their hair so nothing huge right?)._

"_How dare you wrongly attack Juudaime, you bastard?" Gokudera thrust his face really close to I-pin. _

_Hmm… She could see his face now. She thought he was an octopus before…_

"Greeeey, something other than chicken soup and congee? It's Saturday! Nearly a week!" I tried on my fifth day. Grey raised an eyebrow at me and gave an evil eye twinkle.

I gulped. Did I say something wrong?

"_Don't bother Lambo-sama!" And Lambo proceeded to fart into Gokudera's face. Two veins immediately popped out on Gokudera's forehead._

"_Why you… Get back here!" And he joined the chasing circle that before only held I-pin and Lambo. Tsuna's eye twitched. What the heck was Gokudera doing?_

_Gokudera was shaking Lambo until Haru suddenly appeared declaring bullying wasn't right. Conversation proceeded normally until I-pin told Haru quite matter-of-factly that she looked like a dumpling._

_And in the chaos that followed, Lambo had to make it worse by calling I-pin a tail-head._

_The Pinzu-countdown started and both Gokudera and Tsuna immediately started panicking, trying to yank (unsuccessfully) I-pin off Tsuna's leg._

"_He's not letting go!"_

"_Do this." Reborn kicked Lambo's Ten-year-bazooka over I-pin. And with an explosion of pink smoke, a pretty girl was standing in the middle of Tsuna's room._

_Cue the OMG faces._

"_I-PIN'S A GIRL?"_

_Tsuna secretly sighed. Why did so much more happen on weekends?_

Apparently, because of my pleas I got something else other than congee and chicken soup on Sunday.

Oatmeal.

Which I hate. With a passion.

"Grey! You know I hate oatmeal!" Grey checked my temperature.

"You're still a little warm. Maybe still a bit delirious." I scowled and forced one mushy, tasteless, gloopy, puke-coloured bite into my mouth.

Meanwhile…

"You want us to visit Alice-san, Reborn?"

"Yeah. And you can deliver the week's homework to her too." Reborn held up a wrapped package with a smirk.

"I mean it's okay but…" Tsuna narrowed his eyes in thought. This was _Reborn_ he was talking about. There must be some ulterior motive.

"Haha! Let's just go, Tsuna!" Yamamoto laughed as he slung an arm around Tsuna's shoulders. "Alice might be a bit lonely after a week!"

Gokudera fumed. "Let go of Juudaime!"

Tsuna sighed and laughed and chuckled and put on an exasperated look all at once (his face was getting better and better at multi-tasking). "Okay then, let's go. Where does she live, Reborn?"

Reborn smirked and stroked Leon.

"Follow me."

"Ooh, where are you going? I wanna come, I wanna come!"

"I-pin too!"

"Oh, Hayato. Are you going to visit the Brighteye? I cooked some get well presents for her; I'll go with you."

"Tsuna-san! Reborn-kun asked me to come over and I heard you're going to visit a girl called Alice! Are you cheating on me?"

"Tsuna-kun, if you're going to visit Alice-chan then let me come too."

And suddenly it became a field trip.

* * *

They met two girls at the gate way.

"Are you sure they're going to let us in, Setsuna-chan?"

"Of course! We've come here before, Miwa!"

"I know, but…"

"Ah, don't worry so much!"

They looked up at Haru's shout. "Ah, Setsuna-san and Miwa-san! What are you two doing here?" Looking up, surprised, the two of them saw the whole group.

"Oh, Haru-san. We're going to visit the good friend we told you about before. Her name is Alice and she's sick…"

Haru looked surprised. "That's who Tsuna-san is visiting too!"

That made the two look up. "Oh, are you all Alice-chan's friends? Wait, Kyoko-chan!"

"Setsuna-chan, how're you doing?"

And that's how the two of them joined the group.

* * *

The snobby receptionist sniffed at the group of kids gawking at the furnishings. What was so amazing about the chandeliers? These low-class kids invading the best hotel in the area! How did they get in, anyway? The gatekeeper was too friendly; he didn't understand why the hotel manager didn't swap him.

"Yes."

The wimpy looking one immediately snapped to attention.

"Umm… I was wondering what level Alice-san lived in?"

The receptionist sniffed again and searched through the names of the people living at the hotel.

"There are three Alices. One on the second level, the seventh level and penthouse. Specify which one you want to contact."

A quiet girl at the back eyeing her shoes spoke up.

"Oh, Alice-chan lives in the penthouse."

The receptionist nearly laughed. Didn't they understand that Brighteye-sama was the highest of the high and didn't associate with anyone at all except for business matters? Stupid, ignorant children. He smiled down at them, eyeing the finger prints they left on the marble counter with distaste.

"That's impossible; Brighteye-sama never comes out of her room unless its week days and those outings are for her mission with the Vongola Juudaime…"

Tsuna's thoughts were confused. Who was Brighteye-sama and what mission? Not the one like… Hey, where was Reborn?

* * *

"Miss, your friends have come to visit but they've been stalled at the receptionist desk."

I sighed. I knew firsthand how the receptionist was.

"Okay, help me up, Grey. I need some exercise anyway."

"Are you sure, Miss?" Grey asked while helping me up, his mother hen self showing. I smiled.

"They've come all the way for me; I would be a bad host if I didn't even let them in, eh?"

I cursed myself for weakness when I had to practically lean on Grey to walk. I still had a thirty-eight degree fever. I had called Liza to ask why, especially because usually back in my first life I recovered from most sicknesses in three days.

I remember that conversation…

"_Oh, Alice, you're sick?"_

"_Why, isn't it obvious?" I croaked. "Why haven't I gotten better yet? I usually get better after three days or so…"_

"_Alice, remember our bodies are not supposed to be here. True, we can't die before the time we died the _first_ time, but our bodies are very vulnerable to things like viruses and bacteria."_

"_So what; I can't bleed to death but I can suffer a long time under a friggin _flu?_"_

"_Yeah, that's right. Why else did I pick Grey for you? He's a perfectionist in cleaning; he would make sure that everything is clean for you. Our bodies are weaker towards sicknesses the closer to our disappearances and since you died so young…"_

_I interrupted her with a cough._

"_Well, thanks for not bringing that up before, Liza."_

"_Oh, no problem!" She said happily. I scowled._

"_I didn't mean that, you know."_

"_Really?" _

_She actually sounded disappointed. I sighed and tried to comfort her._

The penthouse elevator announced that we were on the ground floor. I smirked a little to myself.

"Grey, am I too heavy for you?"

"Oh, don't worry Miss. I've supported much heavier things that you."

The doors opened, and we turned left to go to the reception desk. A whole crowd was there, and I picked out the heads of I-pin, Lambo, Bianchi (oh no…), Gokudera, Haru, Kyoko, Setsuna, Miwa, Tsuna and Yamamoto.

"Ciaossu."

Oh, and Reborn.

I shuffled out into the open. They were actually arguing pretty loudly (Setsuna that is) with the receptionist. Bianchi was toying with something in her pocket with an annoyed expression on her face (danger alert!), while Lambo was starting to look bored. The others just looked kind of nervous and shied away from the rich people snobby looks.

"Hi guys."

Everyone immediately swivelled towards my voice.

"Alice-chan, you look terrible! You shouldn't have come down; I was nearly finished with bullying that mean snob to let us call you!"

I shook my head at Setsuna and Miwa, who had rushed to me first (the others were too busy staring).

"I'm fine, guys."

The receptionist looked kind of horrified that they actually _knew_ me.

"Brighteye-sama? Are they really your acquaintances?"

I shot a professional impassive look at him, which he flinched at.

"They're my friends." I said to him. Then I completely ignored his attempts to apologise and turned to the others. "Come on, guys. Don't let the snobs get to you."

I started shuffling back towards the elevator, with Grey the ever steady rock next to me.

The oblivious ones recovered first.

"Haha, Alice. I never knew you were so rich!" Yamamoto laughed.

"Alice-chan, are you okay?" Kyoko asked in concern.

The rich ones just took it all in their stride and walked towards the elevator I was heading to. Bianchi and Gokudera passed me (though Gokudera was trying to avoid looking at his sister as much as possible) with their 'I'm cool and awesome' aura going on.

Then the stupid ones then recovered.

"Gyahahaha! Lambo-san has a castle that is so much bigger than this!"

Airheads…

"Hahi! You must be Alice-san! Nice to meet you!"

Then the practical ones…

"Lambo! Be more polite!" I-pin yelled at Lambo. Then she ran over to me and bowed. "Ni-hao, Alice-san. I am I-pin."

I smiled down at her and replied back. In Chinese. I know, I am so awesome (though my Chinese is a bit sketchy, but due to client reasons and how the world's most spoken language was Mandarin, guess who forced me to study it? I'll give you a hint; STNo.2).

She beamed up at me and ran towards the elevator with a smile fixed to her face.

Aww, she was so cute…

Tsuna, as usual, recovered last.

"Hiie! Why does Alice live in the penthouse?"

"Baka-Tsuna." A small foot hit the back of his head. "Stop yelling to yourself and go to the elevator with the others."

Tsuna then looked up to find that even I, with Grey and Setsuna and Miwa all slowly shuffling with me, had already reached the elevator.

"Sorry!" He rushed towards us to trip on a pot plant.

I sighed and shook my head in suppressed laughter. I never knew you _could_ trip on a pot plant.

Tsuna would always be Tsuna, I guess…

"The elevator's here." I called out, wincing at my raspy voice.

"Hiie! Wait for me!"

* * *

"REBORN! GET ALICE'S MEDICINE WITH MY DYING WILL!"

I looked disbelievingly from my cocoon of blankets, shielding I-pin's eyes. Tsuna, please don't strip in front of minors. It's a bad influence.

Let's back track a bit…

There they were, settling around on the comfy couches or the fluffy rugs or situating themselves in the kitchen (Bianchi) with Yamamoto getting along pretty well with Miwa, Gokudera having a staring contest with Setsuna and Haru, Tsuna trying to get Lambo under control, me and I-pin having a nice chat in Chinese (though my responses were a bit slow) and Reborn looking around the place.

I was re-braiding I-pin's hair out for her (it was kind of droopy; she told me she didn't know how to ask in Japanese for a person to help her with hair and I gave understanding noises; sometimes Jap people talk too fast for their own good) when Grey came in with a tray of water and a worried expression on his face.

"Miss, I forgot to buy another bottle of the medicine the doctor prescribed and it's your medicine time…"

Grey forgot something? Wonder man _forgot _something? I shrugged, Grey was human after all.

"It's okay, Grey. I mean, we can just buy another bottle."

"But it's Sunday, and the closest open pharmacy is a twenty minute drive away. Your medicine needs to be exactly on time."

Everyone looked at that, and I shrugged.

"So when am I supposed to eat it?"

"Ten minutes later."

"Oh, it's okay. It's just medicine!"

"But!" Grey looked upset. And that was when it came.

"Go, Tsuna," Reborn said, cocking his Leon gun smirking, "care for your family with your Dying Will!"

A gunshot and Tsuna falling backwards. I-pin was worried, but when she saw Tsuna rising up with his back flips shedding his pants, I blocked her eyes.

"REBORN! GET ALICE'S MEDICINE WITH MY DYING WILL!"

And… that's how it happened.

Dying Will Tsuna ripped open the curtains and slammed the balcony doors out of his way. Then he proceeded to… jump off.

Wow. He was crazier than me jumping off the second storey of Nami-chu. But the difference was, this was the twenty-seventh floor or something, and that was the _second_ floor.

"Tsuna-san!"

"Juudaime!" Haru and Gokudera immediately ran towards the balcony to see Tsuna madly running down the street in a dust cloud.

Kyoko blinked and laughed. Setsuna and Miwa were in the kitchen, so missed the whole spectacle (fortunately).

"What happened? Where's Sawada-san, Alice-chan?"

"Oh, he left to help me get my medicine." I said in a steady voice (even Yamamoto looked kind of shocked at Tsuna's jump off). I-pin had her eyes opened wide (which wasn't really that wide) and Lambo was just acting as normal (a.k.a rolling on the table crying for grape candies).

"How nice of him," they said and went back to the kitchen.

I looked at both Gokudera and Haru freaking out on the balcony, then at Kyoko and Yamamoto laughing together.

I shrugged at I-pin.

"You just can't understand people sometimes." I said seriously in slow Chinese.

Kind of sad, when you think about it. I say stuff slow in Japanese, Chinese and Italian and the only language I was _really_ good at is English which no-one here speaks.

Not fair.

I-pin nodded in response. "Sawada-san is amazing." She said in halting Japanese. "I must train more."

I hugged her. "You're too cute!" Then I pulled away. "But wait; aren't you afraid of me infecting you or something?"

"I don't get sick."

"Okay then." I resumed hugging her until Gokudera barged in again.

"How can you all be so calm when Juudaime is out there?"

We all did some sort of noise and he just huffed and went out to the balcony again to the more frantic Haru to argue with her. I grinned.

Seven minutes later, a tired looking Tsuna dragged himself into the _apartment_ (it's not a suite, I constantly tell myself) and handed Grey a small paper bag.

"Here."

Grey smiled at him and said thank you. Gokudera and Haru flew to him in concern for his well-being. Yamamoto laughed and congratulated him. Setsuna and Miwa stuck their heads out of the kitchen again from the noise and shrugged it off.

Kyoko walked up to him and did a personal thing that was basically "you were so amazing!" that made Tsuna blush madly.

I smiled, said thank you, and told him that there should be spare shirts in the closet. This time he blushed for a totally different reason and rushed towards the direction I was pointing to.

So Grey was happy giving me my medicine right on time, Bianchi with Setsuna and Miwa in tow proudly presented some purple looking soup, I-pin jumped out of my arms after Lambo did something rather stupid and drastic, Yamamoto and Gokudera argued and well, it was all pretty normal.

I was kind of happy that they visited me (they adapted to the surroundings surprisingly well; but knowing their personalities I didn't know what else I was expecting) but when they left…

"Miss, I told you not to overexert yourself! Your fever has gone up again!"

And he presented me with chicken soup.

I groaned.

As I ate the chicken soup trying to display my boredom of this dish to Grey, I mentally mused. Lambo was definitely annoying; I now understand why the Lambo ten years later thought I was closer to I-pin than him. Because I certainly got on well with her.

Then there was Haru. I got on with her well; she was kind of like Setsuna. Only more high-pitched. Tsuna, Gokudera and Yamamoto were the same as well as Reborn, and Bianchi was cool now that she didn't go all homicidal on me.

I nodded to myself. I was on good terms with nearly everyone. That was good.

* * *

My seventh day of rehabilitation was spent on feeling the breeze from my open balcony window and drinking chicken soup.

Nice.

I was so bored I actually started doing my homework.

Yes people, I was _that_ bored. I actually wished I was at school. At least with Tsuna and peoples it was interesting. Then I shook my head. It was nice having a break. That was what I wanted, no?

"_Class, we're having a Social Studies group project. Groups of two to three are allowed, so group up! Oh wait, Bright is away. Who wants them in their group?"_

_Nearly the whole class immediately raised their hands. They knew that if you were grouped with Alice it was nearly certain they would get high marks. Oh, the fan clubs of course had other reasons._

_The teacher raised her eyebrows. "Okay then, Yamamoto and Gokudera!"_

"_Hai, sensei?" Yamamoto stood up and smiled. Gokudera did an 'hn' and looked away. _

"_You two are Alice's friends; I'll put her into your group."_

"_Whaat? I wanted to be in a group with Juudaime!"_

"_Now now, it's okay right, Gokudera?"_

"_Get away from me, baseball freak!"_

On the eight day, my fever went down to only a really small one. Grey clucked his approval and gave me some fruit.

I cheered my joy at something other than chicken soup.

Then Reborn floated up to my balcony window in a hot air balloon.

"Alice, Tsuna's having a boxing match after school and I need you." I looked woefully at my mango.

"Wait a bit…"

"Are you still sick? Then I'll set up a camera and a TV to link up with the school gym." Reborn said suddenly. He produced a TV and a camera from nowhere and jumped out. "Bye."

I sighed and ate my mango.

"_Huh, everyone's here!" _I watched Tsuna as he registered with surprise at nearly the whole crowd in the boxing club area. "_Even Alice-san! On a… TV?"_

I waved awkwardly at the camera.

"Hi… Reborn told me to watch your boxing match, Tsuna."

"_Haru rushed here to watch Tsuna's boxing match with max speed, you know!"_

"_I-pin is here too."_

"_Lambo-san, five years old is here too!"_

I heard their voices, but not them because the camera was currently fixated on Tsuna.

"_How did you know?"_

"_Reborn told us."_

I watched as Tsuna sighed. I started feeling sleepy though and I fell asleep before I got the chance to see Tsuna strip, lucky me.

Though I heard Tsuna's yell of "_Alice is sleeping!"_ before I got the chance to really sleep.

I grinned at Ryohei's shout of

"_Extreme!"_

* * *

The next day, Grey pronounced me well enough to go to school, but just to be safe I would stay at home today and tomorrow. But today I wasn't stuffed full of chicken soup, and it wasn't boring.

Why?

Dino had come with like, twenty of his subordinates behind him.

"Yo, Alice! Heard you were sick, and since I was dropping by to check on Tsuna I decided to come here as well because well, they wouldn't let me into the school. And there was this scary looking student with a red arm band standing at the entrance, so I just left."

I snorted. Dino has met Hibari.

"Hey Dino. Are those," I indicated with my chin, "your loyal subordinates?"

"Ahaha, yes. I'm useless without them."

"That I'm sure."

Grey cracked open the pantry. "What do you want to eat?"

Dino grinned.

I grinned.

The men in black suits grinned.

And soon we were chatting away like old ladies.

* * *

"Well, tell Tsuna I said hi."

"Yeah, okay. I should go to his house now. You know his address?"

I raised an eyebrow at him as I scrawled the address onto a piece of paper. Dino laughed. "Wait, stupid question."

"Yes, very stupid." The subordinates laughed, and off they went, down the elevator to greet Tsuna.

Sigh. Boredom set in again…

* * *

So it was Friday when Grey told me I could go to school, but I didn't bother so I went on Monday to my fan club's happiness.

"Are you better now, Alice-sama?" Was practically all I heard for the first few minutes. So after catching up with Tsuna (Doctor Shamal had already come, what a shame), I escaped to the roof. It was free period after all, but it was like I was forgetting something.

So nice and quiet… I sighed happily.

"What are you doing here, herbivore?"

I cracked open an eye to see a certain _someone _glaring at me. This was probably suicidal, but I closed my eyes again and mentally mused it was strange to see a Hibari without Hibird.

"Hi, Hibari. Just enjoying the cloudy weather, ignore me."

I half expected a tonfa in my face but all I got was an 'hn' and the sounds of someone stepping away. From the sound, I think Hibari went to the back of the staircase thing; out of view and sunny. I smiled (thoroughly appreciating that Hibari was in somewhat of an accepting mood today) and continued to relax until…

"Hyaa!" I opened an eye to see I-pin hopping towards the top of the water tank.

"I-pin? What are you doing here?" I asked sleepily, rubbing an eye. Then the door behind me slammed open to reveal Tsuna, Yamamoto, Ryohei, Gokudera and Lambo all panting and yelling

"Wait!"

I raised an eyebrow at them, and they all looked at me.

"I come here for some peace and quiet, but what do I get?" I shook my head sadly as I slowly got up. Yamamoto laughed sheepishly.

"Sorry, Alice. We just want to catch the kid who stole Tsuna's lunch."

"Humph. You should help Juudaime too." Gokudera said with crossed arms. Ryohei just laughed madly in his extreme way. I slowly made my way to the back of the place where Hibari was. He opened an eye and I grinned.

"Well, I don't want to crowd you, Hibari, just going now. Haha!"

And then I proceeded to jump off the school roof into a nearby tree, from which I jumped off onto one of those warm silver benches.

Hmm, I have to train up more…

I lay down the bench, the tree dappling it with sunshine as I tried (_tried_) to ignore the happenings on the roof.

Tsuna soon joined me to wait for the other three to come down, (Lambo was out of commission since Gokudera used him like a basketball).

"Alice!"

"What do you want, Tsuna?"

Tsuna sat next to me, hands shaking around the green wrapped bento.

"What if this is nitro-glycerine?"

"It's your bento, Tsuna." Tsuna looked at me with wide eyes. "Trust me," I prompted, "I know everything."

As Tsuna continued to stare at me (I was sorely tempted to say it's rude), Gokudera, Yamamoto (carrying Lambo), and Ryohei came up.

"You haven't unwrapped it yet, Tsuna?"

"Oh, I was about to."

He slowly pried it open… to a very cute bento. Yamamoto laughed; Gokudera yelled something along the lines of 'Juudaime!' Ryohei yelled 'Extreme!' and everyone was happy. Lambo suddenly recovered and leapt about in joy.

"That's the lunch I brought over!"

Tsuna looked at me.

"How did you know?" Reborn hopped down from the tree where he was hidden.

"Yes, how did you know?"

I grinned evilly.

"Don't you know the rumour Brighteyes know the future?"

* * *

"Ciaossu, Alice."

I looked up. I was on the roof again (I understand why Hibari loves it so much) and there he was, in all his fedora glory.

"Hi, Reborn. What's up?"

"I need to find a baby-sitter for Lambo. You're coming."

"Err… what?"

I didn't get a choice as I got dragged down the stairs towards the gardens at the side of the building.

"Hello, Yamamoto, Gokudera, Ryohei, Bianchi."

They all said their respective hellos. I smiled at them and waited, chatting to Ryohei. Wait, I didn't really chat to Ryohei, it was more like he screamed out stuff about boxing while I nodded.

"Oh, Tsuna's here!"

We all looked at Tsuna, who looked at us with this really deadpan look on his face.

"It's these members again…" He looked to his left, where Reborn had suddenly dressed into a panda suit with Bianchi his willing helper in a squirrel (_squirrel?)_ suit.

We all ignored Lambo and Gokudera going at it in the corner as Reborn explained why we were here (not that, of course, I needed it).

So this was basically what it boiled down to. Whoever could babysit and make Lambo smile would become Tsuna's right hand man/woman.

This led to Gokudera throwing himself into it (and failing. Epically), Ryohei yelling at him "passionately" (Lambo cried even harder) and Yamamoto laughing and thinking it's a game (and accidently pummelling Lambo into the wall with his pro pitching skills).

Then it was my turn.

I walked over to Lambo and sat down in front of him.

Then I stared.

Silence.

One minute passed.

Two minutes passed.

At two and a half, Lambo stopped crying and started staring back at me.

I frowned.

I did not want to be Tsuna's right hand man… I mean, woman.

Gokudera was already fuming behind me, muttering things like (maybe I'll plant a bomb in her desk) so I decided to take some action to make him cry. So I frowned harder in thought.

At my frown, Lambo started running away.

"Bwaaaaaa! She has scary eyes!"

I blinked.

That was easier than I thought.

"You're all disqualified." Bianchi loomed over us with her squirrel suit, taking notes on her clipboard.

"You all are horrible! Making Lambo-chan, cry." We looked up to see Haru, who was standing there with her hands on her hips. "Even you, Tsuna-san!"

I raised my hand. "Hey, I object. I didn't do anything."

Haru smiled at me.

"It's not your fault you have scary eyes. So I forgive you." I grinned.

"And because Haru forgives me," I made up an excuse to leave on the spot, "I can go now. Bye!"

I walked away, noting that Tsuna had this expression on his face that was a mix of 'don't abandon me!' and 'sigh, as expected of Alice-san…'

Shrugging and smiling, I left.

Being with Tsuna is always interesting.

* * *

"Hey, want to do homework together at Tsuna's house?" Yamamoto asked, inviting to go back with them. I shrugged and started walking with them. He laughed and clapped me on the back.

Tsuna smiled at me as well, and after I smiled back he turned to Gokudera. I listened to Yamamoto natter about baseball and soon enough, we were at Tsuna's house.

"Today was the worst day ever…" Tsuna sighed as he slumped towards his living room table. That was until he realised someone adult and _male_ was with his mother in the kitchen.

"Ah, Tsu-kun! You forgot your lunch again today, and someone kindly brought it back." Nana smiled and gestured to a white-suited man.

"Oh, it was nothing, madam. It would be expected of anyone." He turned around and though I admit he was quite good looking, from my… sources of his conduct I knew not to approach him.

I bet he would even flirt with a five year old girl, the old pervert.

"Doctor Shamal… Oh wait, is that?" Tsuna paled significantly.

"Shamal." I grouched and went to sit down on the couch. The others were too concerned about the nitro.

Of course I knew that it wouldn't explode, but they didn't.

I sighed as the familiar sound of Tsuna screaming "STOOOP!" was heard. Tsuna rushed forward and rescued the box, then went to call out I-pin. I sighed and slumped.

Shamal wouldn't notice me when he couldn't see my eyes, right?

"Oh, that senorita over there, how do you do?"

Scratch that. His woman sensor was strong enough to sense me even when I was trying to blend in with my surroundings.

"Shamal."

"Ooh, you know my name! Can I know yours?"

I turned around to pin him with a glare. His eyes widened fractionally at my eyes, but like a true Hitman he didn't react much more.

"You'll know soon enough, _sensei."_

He smirked, I frowned, and Tsuna came back carrying the nitro and I-pin. She brightened, seeing me.

"Alice-san!"

"I-pin! Good to see you!" She bowed, and took the nitro.

"I will be going now, Nana-san."

"Oh, call me Mama, I-pin-chan!"

She bowed again and took off out the window. I put my school bag on the floor and looked around. Then remembered I hadn't introduced myself to Nana yet.

"Err, Tsuna's mom! My name is Bright Alice and I'm Tsuna's classmate." I sprung up and bowed to her. She waved a hand.

"No need to be so formal! My name is Sawada Nana, but you can call me Mama. I've always wanted a big family."

"Um… okay."

And grinning, she set about to make dinner.

* * *

The next day, I was early to class again. I watched Tsuna as he fidgeted all the way through the first three periods, recess, the next three periods, and the first two minutes to the start of lunch.

Then he turned around to face Kyoko, just to be blocked by Yamamoto holding his lunch.

"Want to eat together, Tsuna?" As he looked at Kyoko forlornly, Gokudera came in too, holding his bought lunch.

"I'm the one who will eat with Juudaime!"

And so the two talked/argued while Tsuna looked at Kyoko _still._

"Where do you want to eat today, Hana?" Kyoko asked, smiling up at Hana who was currently looking outside inspecting the sunny courtyard.

"What about the courtyard?"

"Okay!"

"Want to come too, Alice?"

"Nah, I'm fine." I yawned and stared at the blackboard blankly. As they left, an arm pulled me up and I looked at the culprit.

Yamamoto. Should've known.

"Come on Alice, lunch should be eaten together!"

So there I was, sitting around Tsuna's table. I should be glad every table has four sides…

"Were you about to invite Sasagawa? Sorry if I disturbed you." Yamamoto told Tsuna. I ignored the conversation as per usual (I think they were used to me being like this) and munched through my egg rice.

Blah blah blah…

Heh, the class room was so loud. There was a reason that I liked the roof. Everyone mostly avoided it because Hibari usually goes there to sleep, but I found that he ate lunch at the Disciplinary Committee office most of the time.

So sometimes I get the whole roof all by myself… A high squeal broke through my nice bubble of imagined silence.

"Kyaah! Gokudera-kun is so cool and handsome!"

"Yamamoto-kun, can you please accept this lunch box?"

"Alice-sama! Please accept this trinket I made especially for you!"

Gokudera bit into his sandwich, annoyed. Yamamoto smiled and thanked the girl (who bounced off happily to friends exclaiming excitedly) and I blinked at the boy. Then I took it slowly, noted it was actually quite pretty and thanked him with a smile.

He beamed and bounced off much like the girl did.

Tsuna was staring at all three of us with deadpan eyes.

I nearly snickered. He had forgotten we were popular, didn't he? No surprise though, once you got to know people through Reborn, it's kind of hard to remember their social status.

I _did_ laugh at Yamamoto and Gokudera when they offered their lunches to Tsuna.

Reborn just kind of made us show the quirky part of ourselves.

And speak of the devil…

Reborn came through one of the floorboards, and spoke to Tsuna.

"You're popular, Tsuna. Just to your subordinates."

"That's no better!"

I smirked into my food and stole an egg roll from Tsuna's bento. Gokudera glared at me "Give back Juudaime's lunch, freaky-eyes!" I snickered and ate it. Nana's cooking was the best…

So Yamamoto was baseball-nut, Ryohei turf-top, and I freaky-eyes.

Gokudera sure had imagination.

I laughed at that, in which Tsuna and everyone else in the class stopped and stared. I waved their gazes away, chewing through a prawn.

* * *

"Oh hey, I-pin!"

I-pin looked up and waved.

"Alice-san! Why are your eyes different?"

"Contacts. What are you doing?"

"I collected some gyoza bun ingredients from master! Do you want to try one?"

I looked at the gyoza. Wasn't it supposed to be fatal if you don't train for ten years or something? But then, I'm not supposed to feel any side effects or die from a lot of things I'm _supposed_ to die from…

And anyway, that gyoza looked nice.

"Thank you, I-pin!" I took it from her and ate a bite. It was surprisingly good. I felt warmth all over my body.

"Wow! It's so nice! Thank you, I-pin!"

"No problem, Alice-san! I must go back to Tsuna's house now, bye bye!"

"Bye, I-pin! See you later!"

I grinned at her and kept walking down the stalls. It was always nice to get some air, and today I even put on contacts so people I bought stuff from wouldn't freak out.

Sighing happily, I continued down the street. I was looking at some food (oh, how much for a box of takoyaki?) when I heard some fighting sounds from a nearby alleyway. Mentally calculating _who_ in Namimori would give a bashing so hard; it led to only one person.

It was confirmed when I saw the flash of tonfa and school uniform.

I was totally prepared to walk away until I heard Hibari ask (growl) "Where is the Kunita gang headquarters? You have been operating in Namimori for far too long!"

Kunita? Gang? It was that gang that kidnapped little Yoshikuni Kumiko. I thought speculatively… Hibari would be able to clear them up…

I stepped backwards. I saw the guy was terrified out of his mind, but he didn't seem like he would open his trap any time soon.

"Um, Hibari."

He looked up.

"You. Sunglasses."

I winced. So that was what he called me in his head?

"Kunita Gang headquarters is under the Second street petrol station. I think you'll be able to figure out how to reach them from there. Bye."

"Who are you? How do you know where our headquarters are?"

I grinned at the stupidity of the guy Hibari was holding up by the collar. Hibari hadn't known whether to trust me or not, but from that guy's words he knew I spoke truth. After making sure Hibari believed me, I tried to book it out as fast as possible.

I did _not_ want any unnecessary meetings with a blood-thirsty Hibari.

"How do you know?" There was a thump from behind as Hibari dropped the guy. The guy groaned and rolled as far away from Hibari as he could. He just kind of sniffed at him and called him something under his breath (it sounded like herbivore).

I turned around with a bright smile.

"I just know these things. Now I have business, bye!"

And I ran away before Hibari had the notion to chase me. He was fast alright, but I was _faster._ How can you hit what you can't reach?

You can't, that's how.

I grinned, kind of, and somehow my running led me up to Tsuna's house.

"Oh, Lambo! What are you making?"

"I'm making a tower!"

I raised an eyebrow at his lump of mud.

"Here, let me help." I said, feeling especially kind today. Lambo nodded and hummed his song.

"Who are you? I'm Lambo! Who am I? You're Lambo!"

I snickered at the cuteness of the song. Heh, even Lambo could be cute sometimes…

"Lambo-kun! We have cake! Do you want some?"

Lambo immediately perked up. I shuffled out of the way as he jumped up yelling "Yes, yes!"

So I watched, still crouching as Lambo raced towards the front door. And I watched, as Lambo tripped right in front of me.

And I watched, as the ten year bazooka popped out of his hair to land on him.

And me.

* * *

**Eh, I apologise again for the lateness! XD But I've gone through a lot of episodes this chapter (I was kind of head aching over how to get past the episodes fast and got up with this.**

**Oh, and the pairing results…**

**Surprisingly enough, Hibari, Yamamoto and Tsuna are all like, in the same first place. They all seem to have people backing them up.**

**There were some who went for Dino, then some for some members of the Varia. XD But the main three are those three up there. You can go by review, but I'll put up a poll on my profile. ^^ I'll see majority from that, haha!**

**And I'll put up another poll (though you can review, if you're anon); it's for the Varia arc. I mean, should Alice be a guardian? A bystander like Reborn (not much I can write about if that's the choice) or something else? Though if she's going to be a guardian, she's not going to snow or moon or something. I have a vague idea of what I want to do...**

**Thank you, and please review? As encouragement to write? ^(oo)^ **

**And to tell me if anything is wrong or want me to add. So, ciao!**


	16. There were a few meetings,

**I just have to say the review count was amazing. I was like O_O over the reviews because I was seriously expecting it to stop around 210 like normal and then it grew and grew and I was so happily shocked even another two assignments due didn't stop me from writing. I was too excited!**

**But now I'm afraid it wouldn't get up to expectations. This is a bit choppy, just to get the filler over and done with. *nervous laughter***

**Poll results are surprising; Tsuna and Hibari are in same first place. So I guess I'll be trying for a triangle or something. ==" I'm not that good at that type of stuff, but I'm trying to improve, so bear with me! But there will only be times of fluff, it'll mostly be other stuff. Sorry, romance lovers. XD I'll leave the poll results up for another day then put the other poll up, the guardian thing.**

**So… THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS! I had such a good time reading them! Thank you, story-alerters and favouriters too, as well as my own sister for beta-ing. LOVES YOU ALL!**

**Okay, there might be mistakes. I typed this all in one go with frozen fingers so… please be accepting? ^^" So… please enjoy! **

* * *

The first thing that registered was something prickling at my skin. Then I realised sunshine, trees, grass, and I was thankfully _not _underground.

One problem solved. Next.

The whole group was there, apparently having a picnic. I sat there was about half a minute or two before anyone actually noticed me sitting there slightly bewildered as the little Lambo was entertaining everyone on the picnic blanket.

"W-what?" A pretty girl with braids (I-pin?) stuttered, pointing towards me. Then she leapt up and ran at me with great speeds, arms stretched out. "ALICE-NEE!"

And so, just when I had stood up I got banged onto the floor again by I-pin's glomp.

"Err, hi I-pin." I patted her back awkwardly. She looked desperately at my eyes (huh, why my eyes?) and her eyes grew watery.

"It really is Alice-nee!" She started crying in my shirt again, her hands gripping my shirt tight. "I can't believe it!"

"Alice?" An old looking Ryohei called out. Then I-pin shifted a little so he could see my kind of shocked face and he did a happy shout. "It really is Alice! I'm feeling happiness to the Extreme!" A hand whacked him on the back of the head.

Hana.

"Didn't I say limit your use of extreme?" She said in a slightly irritated voice. Then she turned to me, looking a little moved. "Alice-chan, long time no see." She said softly. I waved, the other preoccupied with comforting the girl currently still on top of me.

"Hi, Hana. Good to see you have a boyfriend."

She immediately blushed. "W-what? He's not my b-b-boyfriend!"

I-pin shifted a bit more so I could sit up in the long grass. I smirked at her. "Your stutter says a lot, Hana. He'll ask soon, I bet." Ryohei turned a deep violent shade of red. I smirked even harder.

Hey, this wasn't as hard as I thought.

"Though, I'm surprised I'm not lying in my remains somewhere underground." I looked around. "This is kind of nice. It's cool that I'm placed in such a nice place."

The others were kind of shocked through, but they were starting to thaw out. They _were_ having a picnic, with a picnic blanket and boxes and rings and food in a picnic basket. "That chicken smells nice." I added, trying to smooth the atmosphere. I-pin gave a kind of sobby laugh and everyone suddenly shifted into action.

"Alice!" Yamamoto smiled and laughed, sword strapped to his back, "Welcome back! Did Lambo fire the ten-year bazooka at you or something?"

I scowled, but that somehow made everyone teary (huh?) so I stopped. I put on my blank face instead and recounted. "Lambo tripped and the bazooka fell on me _and_ him. I don't know how we fit, seriously…"

Gokudera sprung to life then, and grabbed tiny Lambo and noogied him.

"Stupid cow."

"Stupidera!" Lambo whined, squirming out of Gokudera's loose grip and running to a more accepting Kyoko and Haru. They were both staring at me, wide eyes. I waved.

"Err, hi. How are you doing?"

"Alice-chan! You've been…" Kyoko stopped talking just then, maybe realising that talking about my death to me might not be so good. But she got up and went to me, hugging me as well, and her long hair brushing my nose so much I thought I might sneeze. "I missed you. Everyone missed you."

I sneezed and brushed her hair out of my face. "You talking about my death?" Everyone who had reanimated (Haru had been coming over to join the group hug) immediately refroze. I sighed and waved a hand. "I knew a long time ago. I'm just glad you all had the sense not to put me in a deep dark dank coffin."

"B-but how?" Haru's voice came. I squinted up at her, unable to presently move because of the dog pile on me (I-pin and Kyoko were both a little heavy, to tell the truth).

"I'm Brighteye. Of course I know." I yawned. "The sunlight's warm… It was freaking cold over there." Then I looked around amid the laughs. "Oh, where's Tsuna? I understand Hibari might not be here but I thought Tsuna would be the main focus in a picnic like this."

And then they all froze again. Taboo subject, eh? What was there to be taboo _about?_

"Anyway, Alice-chan! Before you… you died, you told me to give you this." She pushed a journal into my hand. "Please take good care of it." I-pin smiled at me, her eyes still streaming tears. I shifted a little to get the Haru/Kyoko/I-pin pile off me and the let off. I stood up and searched my pockets.

"Ha, I knew I had a packet. Here, I-pin." I held out a packet of tissues. "Wipe your nose." This just made her more teary (I guess it would be surreal to talk to a person who's been dead for years in their time and took it with a tiny nod, looking at it like it precious. "Your Japanese is wonderful, by the way."

"Thank you." She blew her nose. Gokudera and the others were just watching our girl exchange, knowing in some deep male instinct not to get between girl bonding. I started chatting to Kyoko and Haru, complimenting them on their looks and stuff, the norm. Then I waved and pointed to the sword on Yamamoto's back with a raised eyebrow. He gave a sheepish grin and scratched the back of his head just like the Yamamoto I knew; only older and tireder looking. This grass plain was pretty nice, and in the corner of my eye I saw Gokudera wrestling over a sandwich with Lambo, and Hana and Ryohei being lovey dovey (in their own way).

"Today was to anniversary of your death, so we all wanted to be here." Kyoko was telling me. I nodded. "Tsuna and Hibari's running late though."

"That's awesome."

"I'm currently going out with Tsuna." She said, as if testing waters. I brightened up.

"Oh, I totally predicted this! And I was counting the days you would still go on naively! I thought you two would _never_ get together, seriously."

"You… you don't mind?" Kyoko asked, greatly relieved of… something. I blinked at her and her long hair.

"You know, it's strange to see you taller than me. Whatever, yes, of course I don't mind. Tsuna's like an older brother."

"Haru is still fighting for a place in Tsuna's heart!" I patted her shoulder.

"Yes, you do that."

"What about Hibari?"

Huh? I looked at Kyoko in confusion. "What about Hibari?" I asked her, greatly confused.

"What do you think about Hibari?"

"He's scary." I said immediately. But for some reason, at my words, the whole picnic mat full of people exchanged wry grins. I got defensive. "What?"

"Haha, nothing Alice! We're all just so happy to see you after… after so many years!" Yamamoto said with a laugh. I grinned.

"Well, it must be surreal for you all to be talking to me again. I think I broke the jar that held my ashes though, just saying. Maybe it got blown away…"

When they had just started looking, I saw two people get out of a car that had been speeding towards us down the country road. Looking past it, I saw a sparkly river. This was the epitome of peaceful countryside, wasn't it?

"Sorry guys, I'm late. Hibari wanted to finish our match first."

I stared, the sun was in my eyes so I couldn't look clearly, but that voice kind of sounded familiar. Then I cursed my stupidity. Of course this was Tsuna.

"Tsuna! Look who's here!" Yamamoto called out. "Hibari too!"

The two looked at where they were pointing and I bet only saw I-pin and Haru and Kyoko all standing around something because there was a laugh and a question of why they were doing so. And so they solemnly parted so I could see Tsuna and Hibari clearly.

The first thing that registered was that they were tall. Like, really tall.

"A-alice?"

"Tsuna, I would think you would have grown out of the stutter by now." I deadpanned at him, trying not to look at his incredulous face. It looked a little pained, and I wondered about that… so I looked to the side where Hibari was. And it was even worse.

Hibari should never look surprised. It actually makes him look normal. I scowled.

"What, you two lost your tongues? Anyway, why are you all so tall anyway, stupid men growth spurts…" I grumbled.

There was a disbelieving laugh, and Tsuna stepped a little closer, still a bit disbelieving. "You…"

"Tsuna, one thing." I interrupted. He immediately stopped talking. "Don't hesitate when making a hard decision in the near future." I pinned him with one of my looks. "It's okay, we're strong enough."

Tsuna looked positively surprised. "How did… wait."

"I know the future, Tsuna. Proven now, eh? Anyway, I'm just happy I have the chance to see you all like this. I mean, obviously my future self can't so it's strange for my past self to see…

It was in the middle of my rant that Hibari started stalking forward, his face determined to do… something. But he never got to do it, because only three steps away a pink cloud of smoke obscured my vision and I was back at Tsuna's house.

Strange. I tightened my jacket, suddenly colder. Something in Hibari and Tsuna's eyes were strange.

Absolutely and utterly strange.

* * *

A few weeks had passed without me realising . Where had the time gone? It had been relatively normal though, with Gokudera (as always) in a state of near exploding the classroom to bits, Tsuna trying to stop him, Yamamoto laughing and me watching from the side.

Yamamoto had his broken arm spronounced fine just last week. He was apparently iron man, his arm healing in only a month instead of the three the doctor had predicted. And he tested his arm on my shoulder. It left a bruise. I thought the muscles would have gotten weaker at least! But it was good for Yamamoto; the baseball team was welcoming him back with open arms and happy teary faces.

I looked out the window as Grey drove me to school. There was a grey smoke cloud from the right…from an explosion?

Inwardly shrugging, I ignored it. Probably Lambo, or Gokudera or someone else strange who liked to play with explosives…

* * *

My eye twitched as I stared at Tsuna on the nurse bed thing. He was all wrapped up in bandages and I edged away from Gokudera who had been prostrating himself to Tsuna for the last two minutes I've been here.

"Err, Tsuna. Nice. I'll be going now…"

Yamamoto smiled and clapped my shoulder. Again. "Yeah, I'll be leaving now too, baseball practice and all."

We all grinned at him (except for Gokudera, who was still beating himself up because Tsuna got hurt). He had been more energetic lately, with his baseball again.

"So, bye."

Tsuna waved with a kind of defeated expression on his face while staring at Gokudera.

Heh. He probably didn't know what to do. I walked back to the classroom to collect my bag and called Grey to pick me up.

Normal day, normal day…

* * *

Dino was waiting for me at the apartment munching on my food with another of his twenty something subordinates, which signified _something_. I forget though.

"Hey, Dino. What are you doing depleting my food stock?"

"Oh, Alice! I came back at Reborn's request and I popped in again just to visit! Aren't you moved to see an old friend?"

"No. You're eating my hidden stash of hash browns. How can I be happy? How did you _find_ them anyway, when Grey has cleaned the whole apartment four times just to find my stash?"

Dino grinned sheepishly. "Ah, umm, I was trained well?"

I sighed and shook my head with a grin.

"Whatever. Romario, good to see you again."

Grey came in and sighed when they realised they made a mess in his immaculate kitchen.

* * *

I plopped onto my bed and started doing homework, ignoring Grey's motherly tuts of bad posture.

"Miss."

"What, Grey?"

"I have to buy something for our pantry. It's in a dismal state after Dino-san and his subordinates ate through nearly our whole stock…"

"Okay. Go, go…" I said distractedly, immersed in the history of Japan. It was actually interesting… I distantly heard Grey calling up the elevator and leaving. Grinning, I reached for my secret stash of hash browns. You only had to pop them in the oven for a few minutes and poof! Done!

I love modern technology.

Reaching into my mini hidden freezer I had secretly brought just for my hash browns, I frowned when my hand got thin air. Oh, I almost forgot. Dino ate them all.

I grumbled, swinging legs to the floor and standing up. I couldn't call Grey to buy them for me (he thinks my over dosage of hash browns as unhealthy), but I could always buy them myself right? I mean, it should be fine… I wrote a note to Grey, just in case he came back before me, telling him I was going out.

So I went on my merry way down the elevator into the car park, smiling at the gatekeeper, out the gate, to the shops, buy my hash browns, leave, and start my walk back to the apartment. Then I saw a dejected Gokudera sitting on a swing in the park. I sighed. It was my job to meddle in things around Tsuna, after all.

"What's up?"

Gokudera briefly looked up and looked straight down again, muttering a sullen "shut up…"

I frowned and sighed at the same time, knowing I was probably interrupting an emo sequence of past events running through his head, which was a _good_ thing. So I plopped myself down on the swing right next to him, putting my hash browns carefully next to me.

It was nearly sun set, the sky a beautiful looking orange and pink and blue, birds were chirping and there was even the smell of petrol and mown grass. I stated swinging a bit, listening to the swing creak. This park was peaceful…

"It's my business to know."

"You should probably already have guessed what is running through my head, anyway…" He, still muttering, said softly.

"I can." I had looked up his history, and frankly it's sad. "You're probably running through all the times when you were rejected to join any family when you were young and not strong."

"Don't read my mind, it's creepy…"

"I make educated guesses. Reading minds is Reborn's job." He gave a depressed chuckle.

"Maybe I'm more suited to being alone…"

I sighed. Was I fated to give cheesy pep talks? I looked over at Gokudera though, and seeing Nana-san was not coming anytime soon I opened my big mouth.

"Well, Gokudera. I can't really see you as being alone." Gokudera didn't react much, so I kept going. "You fawn over Tsuna, you yell at Yamamoto, you argue with a stupid five year old cow, and a literal human bomb respects you. And I see Tsuna looking at you as a friend. Don't you think that is even more precious than being his right-hand man?"

Seeing Gokudera's look, I hastily tacked on a little last bit. "Being Tsuna's friend _and_ right-hand man is even better, of course. Just don't look at your failures and seek to improve, Gokudera. Maybe you were alone, and you may still feel alone. But you can never _be_ alone, not anymore. Not with Tsuna, ne?"

I grinned at him, and Gokudera looked down again, but with a contemplative face. I got up from my swing, knowing I didn't have any more to say.

"Well, bye Gokudera."

So I proceeded to pick up my hash browns and nodded to Nana-san, who was just passing by. She gave me a glowing smile, and I bowed back. She put on an exasperated face, and I bet she was just telling me not to be so formal, but I pointed with my thumb towards my back.

Nana's face lit up when she saw Gokudera. We said respective goodbyes and Nana headed towards Gokudera.

And I strolled away, feeling like I did a marvellously magnificent thing.

I hope I didn't change the plot much.

* * *

"The ends of term results are on the board!"

There was a general crush of people wanting to see. So I stayed at the back until Kyoko came back to me with a happy/resigned expression on her face.

"Alice! You got first place in the grade again…"

Of course. I would be worried if I didn't.

"Well, that's wonderful. What did you get?"

"I was number twenty-third."

"That's wonderful though!"

"Nothing compared to first though, Alice-chan."

I sighed and patted her back. Not much to say about that.

* * *

"What? I can't take a holiday now, Teacher!"

Spartan Teacher No. Two wasn't relenting.

"You just finished your finals, and you're one of the five Brighteyes that are kind of free right now. You have to go. It's an important party. The Brighteyes must send the required amount of people. I won't even mind if you hide out the whole party. Just show."

I knew that tone of voice. She wasn't going to budge.

"Okay, then…"

"Then leave now. I already took care of the school side of things. If things go smoothly, you'll be back in the middle of the New Year holidays so you can enjoy a bit."

I knew not to argue. I nodded, and put down the phone.

"Grey. We're going on a trip. Pack for a two week stay."

* * *

"What's the point of going, anyway?" I grouched at Liza. She laughed.

"Well, you're stuck with it so might as well enjoy it!"

We pulled in front of another flashy grand house, footmen people opening the car doors and checking our invitations, then nodding and leading us through. I arranged an appropriate unfrowny face. I couldn't try for a smile yet.

"The food's tasty." Another Brighteye added, trying to make the situation better I guess. She didn't seem like one for social gatherings either.

"The Brighteyes!" The person at the door called out, like those old movies. The people inside swarmed, and I grinned for a total of one second, doing what Spartan Teacher No. Two said to do; tell them there were five Brighteyes and that we sent the appropriate number.

Then I ran away to an adjacent room after slipping on my sunglasses. Gosh, rich people were _scary._ I wandered, not really caring whichever way I went as every single room had a window of some sort and I knew I could always jump out of one if worst comes to worst.

And the worst did come.

I hate how Fate loves screwing with me making me meet characters when I try to avoid parties.

"Who… are you?"

I looked down at a kid, about four to five years old, looking up at me. I internally groaned when I saw the Giglio Nero sign under her left eye. Hoping against hope that who I was meeting _wasn't true _(I thought she wasn't supposed to know about Mafia until later!), I smiled and crouched down to her level.

"My name is Alice. I'm thirteen."

"My Grandma told me not to talk to anyone strange…"

"It's okay. I'm a kid too, see?"

The kid looked at me with huge blue eyes for a moment until she came to a conclusion. She nodded.

"You don't seem to be bad. My name… is Yuni."

And I mentally bashed myself on a wall in my head. What the? How did I get myself in these situations? Outwardly though, I calmly smiled.

"Well, Yuni, why aren't you in the party?"

"Well," she said to me, settling down back where she was sitting, inviting me to join her, "my Grandma told me I could see mama here. But she told me to avoid scary people in black suits and there were so many scary people in black suits that I ran away…"

"Your grandma?"

"She isn't my real Grandma. My mama gave me to her because she has a very important job. She visits sometimes, and I miss her so Grandma told me I could probably meet her here. She told me not to come though, and now I feel bad because I don't know how to get back…"

Cute kid. I reached and ruffled her hair. She jerked and looked up at me again.

"Why are you wearing sunglasses in the dark?" I reached up to my sunglasses in surprise.

"Oops, I forgot to take them off. Haha!"

She laughed with me, and she didn't react one bit at my eyes. I grinned at that and looked out. "Well, your Grandma must be worried."

"No, she always falls asleep at seven and wakes up at six in the morning. She didn't know I was coming."

"Where's your house? I'll take you back."

"Really?" She looked up at me with happy eyes. She slipped her hand in mine and happily told me her address. She was entirely too trusting; no wonder Aria, her mom, didn't tell her anything about Mafia until the latest date she could find. Her death.

Shaking such sombre thoughts from my head, I looked down at the cute blue eyed, black haired little kid.

"I know where that is. Come on, we'll avoid detection by going out the window."

She stared at me. "But it's the second floor!" I picked up my sunglasses and put them on again.

"So?" I smirked a little and picked her up. "Hup, we go! Don't scream or they'll hear us!" I whispered loudly as I opened the window with one arm. She clapped her hand over her mouth and only let out a muffled scream as I leapt into a tree and down onto the floor, absorbing the impact with my knees. Then I started running, weaving through the shadows of dappled light from the trees. The party was going full tilt, I could hear the roar of full conversation and feel the stuffy air from twenty metres away. I grimaced at it and continued running, going towards the gate.

The gatekeeper was looking bored, reading a newspaper, obviously not expecting anyone to open the gate for. Yuni (who had been giggling about how fast we were going), looked at me.

"How are we supposed to pass him?"

I smirked down at her. "You'll see. Actually no, close your eyes. And put the left side of your face into my dress."

Yuni did as I told, and her eyes and her Giglio Nero sign were covered as well as her eyes. I nodded, that's good.

"Excuse me," I said in an impatient voice, "I have to go through." The gatekeeper narrowed his eyes at me.

"Who are you to make such a request? You don't even have a car."

I sighed. Ignorant man. I took off my sunglasses and glared at him. He paled and stiffened.

"Brighteye, bless my soul. I will immediately open the gates, little Misses. Please wait a few seconds."

As he turned around, Yuni squirmed a little, wanting to open her eyes. I shushed her gently, turning to look at the gate. The gatekeeper might believe to think that both of us were Brighteyes and that the kid in my arms was tired so that I wanted to leave. It didn't really make sense that I didn't take a car, but I hope he overlooked it. I didn't know what he'll do if he saw Yuni's Giglio Nero sign. He might be an informant.

"There, please step through." I did my best professional blank look.

"Thank you." I stepped through, and the gate slowly closed again, an iron gate between me and the mansion. I grinned and put on my sunglasses again.

"You can open your eyes again, Yuni." She opened her eyes and shrieked happily when she felt the breeze on her face. Oh gosh, cuteness overload. "Hey, Yuni?"

She looked at me a little disappointedly as I stopped running. "Yes?"

"Hold this for me." I gave her a GPS, with her address already typed in. "Tell me to turn and go where the red line goes, okay? We're currently here, and the screen should move as we move."

"Okay!" She took it, and looked at it seriously. "Go…" she said, screwing her face up, "straight!"

"Aye aye, captain." I snickered as I started running again, shifting her to my back to easily carry her. "Then?"

"Turn left after three streets!"

"Mhmm!"

I stopped running after awhile (I wasn't those crazy shounen dudes with tonnes of stamina, thank you very much) and I don't think Yuni minded since we could talk more that way. I told her stories about Tsuna and his wild adventures with his Family, and his… vigorous teacher. I told her stuff about my years of hellish training, making it funnier so she would laugh. And in return, she talked about her mother's visits (she obviously treasured them) and what she did with her Grandma. She was starting to yawn when we reached her place.

It was a normal house. Simple as that.

"I climbed out through the window…" Heh. She was as bad as me. I went through the window as well, into the kitchen. "My room is upstairs, first door to the right…"

So I went up and opened the door (wincing as it creaked a little; I felt like a trespasser). I put her to bed, pulling her covers over her and trying to tug my GPS from her hand. Her grip was tight.

I winced at what Spartan Teacher No. Two would tell me when I told her I lost it, but grinned anyway. It would remind her of the night she sneaked out to see her mom. I left a note placed under Yuni's hand with the GPS.

_Yuni,_

_Have fun with the GPS. I'm sure you'll see your mother soon, so don't try and sneak out next time, okay? A creepy stalker might come and kidnap you or something, and that's not good._

_And anyway, the next time your mother comes, tell her she owes me. Tell her the truth about you sneaking out; it's okay. _

_Well, ciao! I'm know we'll see each other in the future. _

_Alice Brighteye_

_(You can show this to your mother; I bet she won't believe you. I find most adults are this way. Don't they realise children are intelligent as well?)_

I finished it with a smiley face and grinned down at her. Then I opened her window from the inside and jumped out, feeling like a ninja.

* * *

I got chewed out by Liza _and_ Spartan Teacher No. Two. It was horrible, but I got back in time for the last day of New Year's holidays. After I had settled down at the apartment again, I went out for a walk in a huge jacket (it was freaking snowing) as it was really _really _cold.

When I passed Namimori-chu, I deadpanned as I saw an explosion. And I deadpanned even more when I saw Bianchi, I-pin and Lambo chucking purple snowballs, Dino and his subordinates firing back, Yamamoto and Gokudera trying to the attacks and Tsuna looking on with a _why the hell is this happening _face.

"Alice, you're back."

"Yeah. Can I join you?" I gestured at the kotatsu.

"You may."

And we watched peacefully drinking green tea as Tsuna and peoples tried to get Leon turbo.

"ALICE, COME HELP US!" Bianchi roared, looking positively demonic with her pink hair flying everywhere.

"WE NEED YOUR EXTREME DODGING SKILLS!"

"I-pin needs help!"

"ALICE, AS AN ACT OF OUR LONG FRIENDSHIP," Dino yelled across the field, "COME DEFEAT TSUNA TOGETHER!"

"Hiie! Alice won't do that, will she?"

"Freaky-eyes! If you dare join the other teams, as Juudaime's right hand man, I can't forgive it!"

I slowly stood up, and movement stopped. A stray snow ball hit Gokudera in the face.

"Err, sorry. I'm drinking tea with Reborn."

Silence.

I slowly settled down to warm my feet under the kotatsu again.

Then war started again. "GRAAAH! MUST GET EXTREME WIN!"

"Ah! I want to drink tea with Reborn too!"

"I-pin understands why Alice-nee wants to get warm…"

"I can't believe you, Alice!" Dino wailed.

"At least Alice isn't joining the other teams," Tsuna sighed in relief.

"Haha! Just like Alice!"

Reborn raised his eyebrows at me. I just put my hands nearer to the heater.

It was moderately calm before Enzo appeared. When _that_ happened, I left with a smile.

How can someone be bored around Tsuna?

* * *

"Hell no."

Reborn shrugged.

"No choice."

Then he proceeded to drag me to Tsuna's house and disappeared. Tsuna, Gokudera and Yamamoto were already there.

"Alice, are you coming too? Apparently it's a really good picnic spot!"

I stared at Yamamoto pityingly. Poor deluded guy. A walk on a replica of Death Mountain was not to be fun in the least.

"Well, I don't want to go…" I grouched. "I'm too cold." Then I sneezed, and Gokudera immediately pushed Tsuna away.

"Be careful, Juudaime! She might infect you!"

"Alice, are you okay? Maybe you can sit in the house when we go," Tsuna said worriedly like usual. I grinned at him.

"Okay! And Gokudera, nice to know you got your energy back."

Gokudera turned his head away and said something unintelligible and I walked into the house.

"Bye! Have fun!" And I closed the door and greeted Nana. "Nana-san! That smells wonderful, what do you have cooking today?

"_Sorry, my hand slipped." Dino said sheepishly. Gokudera tried to lunge at him, held back by Yamamoto._

"'_My hand slipped' doesn't cut it!"_

_True, considering that he cut the bridge ropes with his whip._

"_Now, now, we're all safe right? The result is all that matters." Yamamoto tried to calm the fire, always the peace-keeper. And as usual, Reborn poured the cold water over the mood_

"_I wouldn't be so certain you guys are safe yet. The problem is your current location." _

_Tsuna immediately stood up with one of his –ohmigosh don't tell me– disbelieving looks. "You don't know?" The he immediately 'hiie'd when he heard a suspicious sounding vicious bird shriek. He looked around, paranoid._

_Reborn didn't help. "This mountain is exactly like Death Mountain. If you get lost, you're dead. No one has survived after that. It is a mountain of death." _

_Of course he doesn't admit himself that they're lost._

"_This is no time to be smiling!" Tsuna practically screamed from stress of worry and other things. "What do we do?"_

"_Alice would probably know the way out." Reborn said. "Why didn't she come today again? I invited her just in case this happened." _

_Tsuna's mouth dropped. "She was sneezing and I thought she shouldn't come."_

"_We should have dragged her here, she's good at dodging after all." Gokudera grumbled. "It's okay, Juudaime!" He said, dragging his phone out of his pocket. "I hate this!" And he triumphantly holds up his phone. Tsuna's tears of doom changed into ones of relief._

"_Right, if you call for help using that!"_

_Gokudera smiled until he looked at his screen. _

"_There's no signal…"_

_Tsuna drooped. Why did this always happen with Reborn?_

"Ah, Tsuna's not back yet…" Nana said worriedly at the fast darkening sky. "Dinner will get cold…"

I sighed. They were probably still stuck. "I'll bring them back for you, Mama."

"Thank you, Alice-chan! You're such a nice girl," she beamed at me and I waved a hand, bowed, and called Grey to arrange for four helicopters immediately. Ten minutes later they were ready (wow) and I ran to the hotel (which took another ten minutes). And then I directed them to the mountain where I knew Reborn would have hosted his Death Mountain scheme.

"Spot any fires and go there."

"Yes, Alice-sama."

I used satellite images until I found one with a tiny spot fire with tiny dots around them. I gave them the coordinates.

Tsuna and them looked up at the helicopters with relief. I felt kind of sorry for Tsuna, it was freezing and he was in a towel and _boxers._ I didn't question it. They had Reborn to deal with, I wouldn't wonder at the things they did.

"Alice!" they all called up, waving. How they spotted me, I have no clue.

"Huh. Seems like you got yourselves in a pinch."

Some evil looking huge birds started coming our way, and everyone looked on with alarm. I sighed. Why would I expect it to be easy? This was Reborn's _Death Mountain._

"Grey…"

"Yes." He held up a gun and shot twice, both only skimming feathers to shock them away. They flew away.

"I should have known you all would've gotten into trouble without me." I sighed as I got off. Haru and Kyoko ran at me.

"Amazing, Alice-chan!" I blinked this episode a bit blurry in my mind.

"Err, Kyoko, Haru. Why are you here? I thought I was only going to bail those guys out of here."

"We were trying to get to a cake shop in the mountains!" Haru wailed, holding Lambo. I-pin leapt to me and I hugged her as I shrugged.

"How did you know it was me in the helicopter anyway? It's dark."

"Oh, we saw your yellow eyes gleaming in one of them so we knew. It looked a bit evil, actually, until we saw the rest of your face…"

I sighed and waved me hand. "I'm glad I brought extra helicopters. Get on, Nana is worried."

Bianchi walked (sauntered) towards me and clapped me on the shoulder. "I knew you were good the moment I met you." I nodded, smiling while inside I was screaming about how she tried to _kill_ me the first moment she met me.

I hopped on the first one, joined by Tsuna, Gokudera and Yamamoto. The second one held Bianchi and Reborn, the third Kyoko, Haru, Lambo and I-pin, and the fourth all by his lonesome Dino (with Enzo, so he technically wasn't alone…)

I secretly wondered how they left without me in the plot. Then I shrugged. It was Katekyo. They probably magically teleported out after a day or two.

* * *

We later found Tsuna had broken his leg (so that's why he had to be carried onto the helicopter…) and well, Dino got so guilty that he got his own helicopter and sent him to hospital the next day. Nana was exasperated.

"Ha, that Tsu-kun…"

So I went and strolled towards the hospital. It was a nice sunny day after all. Maybe I'll even grow taller by photosynthesis or something. Being surrounded by tall guys makes me feel reeaally short.

"Yamamoto!" I called, waving.

"Alice!" He waved back, and then turned to the guy behind him.

"This is my friend, Alice. Alice, this is my dad."

"Nice to meet you!" He said with this huge blue thing on his back. "I'm glad that Takeshi knows a few pretty girls his age. I was beginning to feel worried…"

"Hey, old man!"

I grinned.

"You want help? That looks pretty heavy…" I eyed the huge blue thing. He grinned.

"Of course not! How can I let a lady carry something like this? I'm really quite strong."

I eyed him doubtfully, but nodded nonetheless. "Well, if you need help, just tell."

We chatted a bit, entered the hospital (looking curiously at Romario and the others outside. They just grinned and shrugged at me, which I responded with a small grin) and went to Tsuna's room.

"Yamamoto! Alice!"

"You're well liked by your subordinates, Tsuna." Dino said to him, grinning. I looked at him in alarm as Yamamoto walked closer to Tsuna.

"I came to visit you! And my old man," he pointed with his thumb. Yamamoto's dad came by and somehow squeezed through the doorway.

"Eat good food and you'll recover!" He said with a very Yamamoto-esque grin, him setting up a little sushi store in front of Tsuna. Then he proceeded to make sushi like fast and pro (wow, it looks kind of like art, only tastier) and he had to leave.

I took a batch of sushi before I left, saying a bye to Tsuna (he nodded at me) and left. As I was peacefully walking down the hallway however, a person flew out from a door in front of me and crashed into the opposite wall.

What the…

"You lost the game so I bite you to death," said a certain guy in black pyjamas holding tonfa. I raised an eyebrow; certainly the first time I saw Hibari out of school uniform. He looked nice.

"Cool, Hibari. Just passing by. Bye!" I forced a grin and ran away.

Hibari was still too scary for me…

Then I munched on my sushi. This was really good! Amazing. As I walked out of hospital, I saw Yamamoto's dad still walking outside. I guess I caught up to him with my running.

"Yamamoto's dad!"

He turned around and saw the sushi in my hands. He grinned his Yamamoto grin (or is it that Yamamoto got his grin from him?) and asked, "Is the sushi nice?"

"It's the best I've eaten!"

"Haha, of course!"

"Why did you do that for Tsuna?" I asked, genuinely curious.

Yamamoto's dad grew serious. "I know Takeshi tried suicide. And I knew that kid, Tsuna was it? Well, Tsuna saved him. Nothing I do can repay him for what he has done for me."

"I bet he'll be fine with just some sushi once in awhile." I said, smile on my face. I was smiling a lot more lately.

"It's the only thing I can do anyway," he laughed through me protests of _that's not true! _And continued, "And why not let him have a taste of what I'm good at? Pun intended."

We had to split ways after that. But it was fun talking to him.

* * *

Urgh.

"Grey, I'm going to SKIP school today. Don't wake me up, don't do anything to me."

"Why?"

"It's Valentine's day!"

"That's no reason! Up you get!"

As no reason I gave to Grey would let me skip school, I asked him to let me stop at a chocolate store and buy lots of chocolate (obligatory chocolate, chocolate you just give to friends) and left.

This was going to be a long _long_ day.

* * *

There was a crowd of boys around my desk and their eyes lightened up at my huge bags.

"Here." I just stated, handing each and every one of them chocolate. They didn't seem disappointed they were obligatory chocolate however, and treated it like gold.

So basically, I handed out chocolate to every single one of my fan boys. I'm nice, I know, but mostly it was because if I didn't, I won't know _what _they would do. Better to be safe than sorry.

I was in danger alert when I only had five chocolates left and another fifteen boys to go. So I stole to the roof, trying to do the 'I didn't see you so I couldn't give chocolate' excuse.

It was just my luck that Hibari was there. I sighed and crept about him slowly, as fast as a slug racing a turtle.

"What are you doing?"

Freezing at Hibari's voice, I turned around with a sheepish grin.

"Haha, hiding out from some boys. I don't have many chocolates left, and there are still fifteen of them… Oh right! I can say I ran out! Here!" I tossed one of the chocolates to Hibari which he caught with one hand with his eyes closed (Heh, he shouldn't be _allowed_ to do cool stuff like that. I'm jealous).

"I hate sweets." I shrugged.

"Eh, I'm actually surprised you're so tolerant of me right now. I'll be going now!" I turned back to the door, plotting a way to get rid of the other four chocolates without inciting some sort of reaction from the ones that missed out.

And you wonder why I hated Valentine's Day. First life; swamped by presents to Amanda. Second life; needing to calculate how much chocolate I have to give.

Valentine's Day sucks.

* * *

"Ni-hao, Alice-nee."

"Hi, I-pin. What's up?"

"I want to make chocolate and I don't know how…"

"Who's it for?"

"Secret."

"Okay then, follow me. I'm sure Grey has a recipe somewhere. I'll translate for you, because I'm personally that good at cooking." I laughed a bit, and I-pin smiled at me.

"Thank you!"

"No problem!" I said in Chinese, and then backtracked thinking about what I just said. That sounded strange…

And so I-pin and I had a nice fun time talking in Chinese all the way to my house.

* * *

"I found a box!" I cried out triumphantly still in Chinese (I was getting into the flow). It was baby blue at the bottom and baby pink at the top. Cute box. Wonder why it was lying around…

"Thank you Alice-nee!"

"No problem!" I handed it to her, and she deposited the hard made chocolate (I swear, we were both covered in failed chocolate making, though it had surprisingly taken relatively fast) into the box. She was about to take the box when I squinted.

"Wait!" And I ran towards my room and cut a piece of ribbon. Then I back to the kitchen and tied it around the box, with I-pin doing the bow because I couldn't tie one after five tries. "Perfect!"

"I'll go now, bye bye!"

"Bye, I-pin!"

I watched as she jumped and pressed the elevator button and waving at me when the elevator doors closed. I felt Grey come behind me.

"She's cute."

"Yeah. She seems like a little sister sometimes…" I turned to Grey. "What's for dinner?"

He frowned at my face but shook his head then looking at the menu. "What about lobster?"

"You're not going to cook today?" I said a little disappointedly. He laughed.

"Okay, I'll make that pasta you like so much."

"I'll prepare hash browns…"

* * *

Fuuta was in my room. Ranking Fuuta was in my room. Freaking _Fuuta_ was in my room! How did he get in here!

"Alice-nee!"

I looked at him, still too early to be civil to anyone.

"What?"

"Haha, Alice-nee is ranked eight hundred and ninety seven in a total of one thousand and two hundred people in being a morning peson!"

I sighed and pushed myself off the bed. "And?"

"And you're ranked as fifth out of seven hundred and fifty-two strong Mafioso that are nice to children!"

"And so?"

"Protect me, Alice-nee!"

I sighed and shook my head.

"Sorry, Fuuta. I can't. But I can sneak you out of here and towards my school though. Tsuna will protect you."

"Sawada Tsunayoshi? He was on my list too of potential protectors, so…"

"Yeah, and I know you'll have a nice time with him. It's never boring around him." I smiled, and Fuuta immediately smiled too.

"Okay, I'll trust you!"

Heh. I got up and ruffled his hair. Cute.

Though… I had to watch him with dead pan eyes as he wrote down rankings in that thick book of his.

Cute, unique little kid.

* * *

Fuuta had fit in nicely (I ignored the explosions that came from the river part of the city) and told Grey to just ignore them and continue driving.

I think he was used to all the strangeness these days, as he didn't even blink an eye at a group of Mafioso chasing some kids with a carpet on one's shoulder. Yamamoto recognised me through the windscreen though, and he waved. I waved back, but by then the red light had turned green, and he was long gone.

I certainly was glad I wasn't in there. Even though I was fit doesn't mean I loved running all the time.

* * *

Why the heck was I in this situation?

Oh right. Because I hung out around Tsuna.

"So… Are you Bright Alice?"

Chikusa Kakimoto. Kokuyo people. I thought I would avoid them (you know, being not that great at fighting but good at dodging; I at least hoped I wouldn't get onto Fuuta's fighting ranking).

"Yeah." I said warily.

"Prepare yourself." He said, holding up his yoyos. I bent my knees slightly, knowing that _this would not be good._

So, Mukuro has finally come.

Lovely.

* * *

**_Extra_**

_Her eyes were fading; she knew. Sometimes when she looked at her shadow, it seemed as if it was wavering, as if it wasn't there._

_It was time. She knew. _

_She knew._

* * *

"_Why didn't you say anything?" She turned around to the voice, her eyes still working enough to recognise him. She smiled._

"_About what?" He stalked forward, and she sensed his jacket sleeves flapping. He always liked having his arms free from his jacket. Yes, that was what he was, free and flying. He stopped in front of her, and she turned away. "I don't want to talk to you right now. I'm so… tired."_

_He stopped immediately, pausing. What could he say to tell her? He didn't know; he never had tried anything like this before. He only knew that he felt angry when she went and did near suicidal missions. He only knew he felt this weird flush on his face he had never felt before around her. He only knew that he liked knowing where she was. He only knew…_

_He only knew when she was near, he felt as if he could fly higher._

_But on that day, he didn't know what to say. Feeling for the first time unwontedly speechless, he watched as she slowly shuffled away._

_He blinked and turned on his heel to face the opposite direction. Then he walked calmly away, wanting to bite something to death._

_Only people that knew him well would realise he walked a little faster than normal._

* * *

"_I don't care if I lose my sight, Tsuna."_

_Tsuna looked at her with teary eyes. The other family members were here too, he realised, all quietly slipping into the room and going to different areas of the room._

"_Why?" Tsuna asked, his voice quivering. She felt around for his hand, him only a blur now that her degeneration had gone so far; she couldn't even see his hand. He gave his hand to her, and she felt it; a bit cold at the fingertips, but his palm was warm. She smiled._

"_I will be able to feel the sun on my face," she nodded at Ryohei, "and the change when a cloud flies and covers it. I will be able to hear the rain and thunderstorms, know and walk through mist, and you know what, Tsuna?" _

_Something wet dripped down his face to land on her hand, warm and cooling so fast._

"_What?" He asked, trying to stop his voice from quivering but failing. Miserably._

"_The sky will support it all, the cause and effect. I will look up, Tsuna, and know that you will always be there."_

_He heard sniffs, and realised they were his. She frowned at that, and brought her hand up to his hair. Her hand was hesitant, but once she knew she was correct, she ruffled his hair in a horribly familiar way. There was an air of finality to it, and he knew it wasn't good._

"_You have been a friend. A good, good friend, nearly almost too good to be true."_

_He tried to smile, his lips moving up. "You'll get better soon, don't worry. Our medical facilities are top class, all our doctors are the best, and you'll get better soon. So please don't say stuff like that, I'll be your friend for a long while yet…" He paused. "You'll get better soon," he repeated, trying to convince himself._

_And she smiled, as if knowing a secret no one else knew. It was nothing big; she had many secrets. But he feared what this one meant._

_Looking away from her unbearably empty eyes, he saw that his sun guardian was already crying, suppressing his sobs for the blind girl in the room. His rain guardian had a pained expression on his face as he tried to comfort him (and not surprising, Yamamoto had been her close friend from the start), and Lambo understood._

_He understood, all too clearly, he understood. He was twelve now and he had seen many things. He missed the days where he didn't have to worry, to feel sad, that everyone who disappeared were just going on a 'trip'. Because now he understood. And he hated it._

_The storm guardian was leaning on the wall, his face turned sideways so that his hair hid his face. Gokudera had been her partner in crime for quite a long time now; they had grown close that way. His mist guardian had hidden her face behind her trident; he couldn't see her face clearly through the metal. But Tsuna sensed sorrow._

_And his cloud guardian…_

_He was nowhere to be seen._

* * *

_She smiled, and she saw the brown blob that was Tsuna's hair turn away._

_She knew. She had known for a long time._

_Her time was up._

_She was going to disappear._

* * *

**If forgot to say this last chapter. Fan art is cool. Just send me the link or something by PM or review and then I'll put it on my profile. XD**

**I'm sorry it's a bit choppy; I wanted to get the episodes over and done with. The Yuni thing just kind of… came out. ==" I didn't plan that AT ALL (I was actually preparing Longchamp and them suddenly Yuni just popped out of nowhere).**

**Sorry for people who didn't know who Yuni was. I didn't really give out a lot of spoilers, did I? If I did, I'm extremely sorry. **

**Accessblade had written a fanfiction with a heroine that also dies and goes into Katekyo too! Check it out if you like the idea of a person dying and going into Katekyo. I just had to say all plagiarism issues have been sorted out (there never were any in the first place, but I love feeling important; thank you Acessblade!) and you can go now to check it if you want! Haha!**

**Please review? I really do like reading them, and well, I'm greedy? _**


	17. A few revelations,

**This is late because, among other things, school is horrible (HOLIDAYS ARE COMING!).**

**Thank you for all the reviews! And my sister for beta-ing (she's tired too, so mistakes... *cough*), story-alerters and favouriters. I love you! This update, although late, came now because of Accessblade's messages gave me a mental kick in the butt. I types this with tired eyes, typos are inevitable. XD**

**For you, Accessblade! Hope you enjoy it. **

**Actually, please everyone who reads this enjoy it. ^^"**

* * *

"Prepare yourself," Chikusa bent his knees and looked at me, eyes locking into his target. He started this really nerve-wracking flicking motion with his hands, and I could practically feel the needles already. I backed away slowly.

Kakimoto Chikusa. Professional Hitman. Versus Alice Brighteye. Weedy information gatherer who has already (literally) died once.

Oh crap. Oh crap. Crap crap crap crap crap. How can I get over the fact that this situation is absolutely _wonderful_?

But first things first; why was I on Fuuta's Namimori's fighting list anyway? I really wasn't that good at fighting. I bent my knees, preparing for the first wave of attack. A series of needles whipped by me, and I started running away without facing my back to the enemy; I trained for days just perfecting this run from SPNo.1.

Trawling through the recent news I get on the computer, I already knew a few Namimori prefects had gotten hit. But was I expecting this?

No.

Definitely not.

"Umm," I called out while ducking around a wall to avoid those really sharp looking needles, "Want to make some peace? I don't know why you're trying to make me into a metallic porcupine but…" I ducked from under a yoyo and kept talking to him, "I really don't appreciate this."

First way of getting out of fights for bad fighters: Talk them out of it.

"No."

Okay, fail. Second way of getting out of fights for bad fighters: Act like a whiny brat.

"_Please?"_

"…" Chikusa stared at me and sent two yoyos in response. Definite fail.

"Well, that's handy." I muttered to myself. Third way was try to exploit weaknesses. What do I know about Chikusa?

Loyal to Mukuro, friends with Ken Joshima, a kind of carer to Chrome (formerly Nagi), was a human test subject to the mafia… Nothing useful to use against him. So I did the fourth option on my list of avoiding fights: Running away. I jumped on a wall and started full out sprinting. If even Hibari couldn't catch me, this guy certainly shouldn't be able to.

Unfortunately, I did something SPNo.1 told me never, ever, ever, _ever, _to do (which I did. Smart, aren't I?).

Turn your back on the enemy.

I ducked the first lot of needles, but then another round caught me in the back, but I kept running anyway (what are a few needles to a few meat cleavers?) and I was nearly up to the end of the wall where I could jump to safety. I narrowed my eyes, nearly there! Three more steps, my back hurts, two, my back really hurts, one…

I cursed, stumbling when needles went deep into my leg, falling off the wall and into a heap on the concrete, jarring my ankle.

Great. Now I couldn't run away anymore. I immediately closed my eyes and lay still, ignoring the needles that were digging deeper into my back because of my position, eliciting my first strategy when getting caught.

When caught, strategy number one: Look defeated and unconscious.

"Is… she already out?" Something like a foot nudged my ribs and I ignored it, breathing evenly and keeping my eyelids relaxed.

"Oi, Kakipi! Aren't you done with the number six girl yet? Seven was so _weak!"_ A nasally sort of voice came from the right. And if I wasn't mistaken…

"Ken." Chikusa's blank voice replied somewhere above me. "I told you to meet me at the meeting place."

"But it was so _boring, _byon!"

A sigh and an arm making me turn over. Then something was put on my chest and footsteps and one-sided arguing went away. I made sure to keep still for a few moments, then I breathed out and tried to move

Without success.

I knew I should've gotten Grey to send me to school today.

It wasn't long before some lady came down the street walking their pooch, saw me, screamed, cried melodramatic tears and started calling the ambulance (who, by the way, thought she was the one who had a problem for five minutes because of her crying). And through it all, I was cursing my stupidity.

Stupid stupid stupid. With my legs like this… I looked down at my swollen ankle in my right and the needles in my left; I could never go with Tsuna.

Stupid.

* * *

'_Midori hana miku…' Hibari answered his school song._

"_Yeah, that's right." He said in a clipped tone. His eyes narrowed at the news and he snapped the phone shut. "Another few students have been attacked." He informed the baby (the herbivore was beneath his notice). "Isn't Sasagawa Ryohei and Bright Alice your friends? They've been attacked."_

"_Huh?" Tsuna yelled._

_Sasagawa Ryohei was one of the most extreme and consequentially strong guys he knew. And Alice had always been fast. They got hit?_

_He and Reborn rushed towards the hospital._

* * *

"Nurse, I'm fine."

"Nonsense," a scary looking red headed nurse told me without looking at me (she didn't seem to like my eyes); "your wounds have to be disinfected." A voice interrupted our conversation.

"She's fine, go away."

We both looked up to try and see the owner of the new voice, with the nurse changing from an annoyed, do-as-I-say face to a face that seemed to want to scold the interrupter for interrupting… Until she saw his face.

"Hibari-san! Yes, of course she's fine." She paled and immediately wrapped my leg up. Then she practically ran away.

Hibari did this weird sniffing motion and looked at me (my eyebrows were as high as they could go, believe me). "Herbivore," he muttered before sitting down. I coughed to clear my throat and stared at the ceiling, ignoring everything Hibari-wise in the room. The awkward silence continued for a total of five seconds before I cracked.

"So, Hibari, to what do I have the honour of your presence on this lovely morning?" I said while mentally calculating how fast I would need to escape out the window with my bad legs.

Not fast enough. Damn, I hope he didn't come here to bite me to death or something.

He scowled and his arm twitched. "I want information. Where is their hideout?"

"And you presume I know because…?"

"I know."

I sighed, seeing nothing was deterring him from asking me (though where he got the information without me in the first place in the series was anybody's guess). I looked out the window and deliberated. Then shrugged.

Why not?

"You know that abandoned amusement park? That was due to be demolished but the company suddenly stopped with the operation? Um, the one with the name Kokuyo Land or something but I really don't remember, sorry. If that isn't enough, it's quite big, in a country like setting…"

"I know where you're talking about."

And Hibari got up without a thanks and left, jacket sleeves trailing behind him. I grinned. I guess a person like him _would_ like their arms free…

"Alice!" Tsuna came stumbling into the room with Reborn perched in his hair.

"Ciaossu."

"Hello Reborn, Tsuna." I nodded at them. Tsuna stood beside the bedside awkwardly.

"I heard you were hurt, are you okay?" I stared at him blankly and gestured to my legs. Both were bandaged up looking nothing like 'okay'. Tsuna laughed and scratched the back of his head. "I guess my question practically answers itself…" He trailed off uncomfortably. We looked out the window together in awkward silence until–

"Baka-Tsuna." A small foot kicked Tsuna's face sideways, his hand holding a small pocket watch with one hand. Good old Reborn, he was always a good ice breaker. "Go outside, I want to talk to Alice about something."

Tsuna scurried outside hurriedly, waving a timid goodbye before shutting the door quickly. Reborn sat on the table next to the bed with a little thump.

"I think you would know of this." He waved the watch with the hand set on six with a list in his right hand. I went up the names.

8th – …

7th – Mochida

6th – Bright

5th – Sasagawa. R

4th – Kusakabe

3rd – Gokudera

2nd – Yamamoto

1st – Hibari

"It matches, doesn't it?" I said softly, averting my eyes, hoping this was enough to stop Reborn reading my mind. Reborn leaned forward, eyes gleaming seriously.

"What does it mean?"

I paused, studying my hands then the room around me, trying to avoid answering the question. Thinking hard, I pretended to observe the window. Birds chirped, and sunlight lit the orange ribbon on Reborn's fedora to a bright yellow. Think, think, think, a reason to why I can't answer… Then I hit upon the perfect excuse.

"I think you've already guessed. But any additional information must be paid for."

And at that, Reborn sighed. "Brighteyes are known for the partiality with money. I have a letter for Tsuna as well," he took it from under his hat. "Best give it to him now. Or maybe tomorrow…"

He hopped up and out the door and my room was once again filled with silence and sunshine reflected off white walls. I sighed in relief, glad I escaped an interrogation session. Who knew would slip out of my mouth if I talked too much?

Too dangerous, the plot future might have been interrupted.

I fluffed up my pillows as much as I could and lay down. Though I didn't like hospitals much (I was reminded of _that_ incident), I slept.

Fast recuperation was necessary.

I had no idea how right I was.

* * *

"_So how was he, Mukuro-san? The Nami-middle boss. Was his name Suzume? Or was it Ahiru?" Ken looked at Mukuro. He smiled at him faintly._

"_He was a 'miss'. He's lying there for now." _

"_I wonder if he's still alive." Ken said while smirking, holding up his hand excitedly. Mukuro shrugged and folded his legs._

"_By the way, where's Chikusa?"_

"_Kakipi left hunting for Number Three. But," Ken said with a glance at Mukuro, "he might be saying 'this is a pain' and not hold back now."_

"_I understand how he feels. We haven't gotten a hit yet."_

* * *

"What now, Reborn?" I asked sleepily.

"I need to investigate a prison break in Italy."

"Money. I'll even give you a thirty percent discount."

"Deal."

* * *

_Mukuro sat in his favourite couch, waiting for the halting footsteps he heard come into the room. Chikusa walked unsteadily into the room, and collapsed. Mukuro looked down at him and smiled._

_Finally, a hit._

* * *

"Grey! I don't need any more apples, its fine."

"But Miss!" he said in worry, "You have to get your strength back up!" I sighed and got up, taking the peeled apple from Grey.

"Grey, get used to it. My mission is officially starting."

Grey widened his eyes in understanding and nodded.

"I understand."

"So I don't need to eat the apple right?"

"No."

I sighed.

* * *

"_Oh, the Vongola Tenth boss candidate?" Chikusa nodded. Mukuro smirked and leaned back into his couch with his hands loosely held together in his lap. "We only knew about him because of _that_ person, but he seems perfect for our aim."_

"…_I want to ask a question, Mukuro-san."_

"_Go ahead, Chikusa."_

"_Number Six on the list was surprisingly fast… as if she had been trained. But she… was really bad at fighting."_

"_Oh?" Mukuro raised an eyebrow elegantly and leaned forward. "Were there any distinguishing features?"_

"_She was exceedingly normal." Chikusa stated slowly in his blank fashion. Mukuro remained in his position, waiting for Chikusa to continue. But as he only continued to stand there with a troubled expression on his face, Mukuro decided to prompt him._

"_But?"_

"…_But her eyes were strange."_

"_Strange?"_

"_They were really bright. Impossibly… vivid. I have never seen a person's eyes like that, Mukuro-san." Mukuro's face froze for a second before his eyes lit up and he started chuckling, then full out laughing. Chikusa stood in front of him wearing a slightly perplexed expression. "Is something the matter, Mukuro-san?"_

_Mukuro waved a hand__ and shook his head slightly__. "No, no. It's just that I'm very interested in… Number Six?"_

"_Bright Alice."_

_In the corner, Fuuta jerked, blank eyes clearing for a moment before settling down again, staring at his big red book. Mukuro's eyes rested upon him._

"_You know her, Fuuta?" Without waiting for a reply he continued. "Of course, Brighteyes are notorious for their meddling." He laughed __hollowly __again before standing up. "I'm surprised that one fell so easily into my lap. Chikusa. Ken."_

"_Yes, Mukuro-san?"_

"_Mukuro-san!"_

_Both immediately stood in front of him. He turned around to look out the window, drawing the drapes away to the side to see a beautiful orange sunset. He smiled a kind sort of smile, the type without eyes so that a person couldn't see if they meant it or not._

"Bring her to me_."_

_He listened to his two subordinates leaving to do his order._

* * *

I flicked through the television channels available and sighed. They were all surprisingly boring.

Was there anything interesting going to happen? I sighed at the prospect of not going with Tsuna on his first battle trip and meeting Mukuro before he got locked up.

With that thought in mind I looked out the window. And nearly screamed at Ken's face hanging upside down with his tongue hanging out. The window opened and he jumped in, with Chikusa following closely behind. I belatedly realised that my mouth was opening and closing like a fish. So I closed it, remembering that I best act the frightened maiden (because what normal person besides Kyoko wouldn't be suspicious of two guys barging into their hospital room on the second floor?).

"Why are you here?" I pointed at Chikusa, drawing my hospital sheets closer to me. Mentally, inside my head, I applauded my quivering voice. Maybe I should have considered doing drama…

"We're taking you on Mukuro-san's orders."

My eyes widened. What?

I hastily stopped my train of thought and immediately flung myself into my frightened damsel act.

"Who's Mukuro?" I said in a nearly loud, ridiculously high voice.

"Don't be so loud, byon!" Ken said in a loud stage whisper, looking out the window (huh? He should be looking at the door…) when Chikusa, ever the practical one, knocked me out with a good whack to the head.

Well, I guess that would work as well as anything.

* * *

I woke up remembering everything that happened to me. So I lay still and listened.

"She going to wake up, byon? It's boring…"

"Wait, Ken."

"And we have to take her to Mukuro straight after she wakes up so we can't go away…"

"She's awake."

"How do you know, Kakipi? She hasn't even moved yet?"

I heard footsteps going in my direction.

"Her breathing changed." Mentally cursing my lungs, I opened my eyes to a dark room, preparing my damsel in distress act again when he frowned at me. "We will take you to Mukuro-san now." He dragged me up, and partially supported me, and I stumbled along trying not to collapse from the pain in my legs. Ken shoved his face near mine enthusiastically.

"Oh, you're awake!"

Well, obviously.

I kept my comment to myself however, and only a few steps away in the corridor was another room, this time with light shining out into the corridor. Which made me wonder; how long was I out? It was night time when I was taken, about nine o'clock in the evening.

"You're awake." A teenager with blue hair smiled politely at me, a trident in his hands. "Lead her closer." He beckoned, and Chikusa complied, led me closer to him and dumped me down. I immediately collapsed, not able to support my weight with my damaged legs.

"I'll get to business fast then, shall I?"

I matched his smile. "Well, that depends on you," I replied, my business tone infused in my voice because I really couldn't think of what to do. Mukuro was technically a good guy, but he was still antagonistic towards Mafia because he hadn't met Tsuna yet. I kept it business like; straightforward but simple. Besides, it seemed like I really couldn't walk away now, my legs seemed to have worsened.

Chikusa and Ken seemed to grunt in surprise at my tone, which was totally different to my damsel in distress one.

"Oh, I only want to ask a few questions." He smiled, took up his trident and pointed it towards me. I raised an eyebrow at him and he merely continued smiling. "I don't usually do this, of course. I like to bargain, but I have no money right now."

Huh. Does he ever stop smiling?

"What a pity." I tried to say as calmly as possible, eyeing the trident that was nearing my chest. "Why did you call me here?"

"As you seemed to have dropped the act you put on for them," he indicated Ken and Chikusa, "I guess you know that I'm very aware of your being a Brighteye."

"Of course."

"Then I want you to answer three questions." He looked at me with his smile, the window behind me partially shading his face, but lighting his hair with white highlights that contrasted with the room. He leaned over, and nudged my legs slightly. I winced. "Where is the Vongola Tenth?"

"Classified."

"Why are you near the Vongola Tenth?"

"Classified."

"I thought so." He mused and put a hand to his chin. "What can you tell me about my future?"

I stared at him. "That is _obviously_ classified."

He laughed and he sat down again, withdrawing his trident. Then it suddenly flashed forward, scratching my cheek. Wincing, (what was that for?) I realised something was off when Mukuro frowned.

"Well, this is interesting. I can't seem to enter your mind."

Blank face. Mukuro stared at his trident for a few more seconds before breaking into a smile again.

"I can always wait for answers, I guess."

"I won't ever say anything, you realise."

"No, not consciously. Do you know Brighteyes have two reputations?" I stared at him blankly, and I tried to creep backwards, my hands meeting dirt and trash but nothing that could support me to stand up.

"No."

"One, of course, is that they have a legendary information network." I nodded, that much was obvious. He twisted his trident in the light, inspecting it. The reflection glared in my eyes, and I squinted, trying to shield them. It was dim, in the room. "Do you know what the second one is?"

I shook my head. He smiled.

"They slip a lot of information when they aren't aware of themselves."

His smile never dropped, and he smiled a little wider, his eyes closing into upside-down crescents. "I think you can keep a friend of mine company. He popped in for a visit yesterday."

Then he leaned forward, and whispered in my ear. "As we are both survivors of death, it would be best to help each other, no?"

Chikusa and Ken seemed to take it as a message, and they propped me up, dragging my out again. I stared at Mukuro, nearly disbelieving his words. I had thought him reincarnating was a symbolism thing but not actually _real. _What did that mean? Were there others like Mukuro running around?

They led me down a corridor, carried me down a flight of stairs (because I really couldn't walk anymore) and into another, yet again, dark room. And to that, there was a room adjoining, which they unlocked.

It was dark. It seems they liked dark dungeon like decors.

"Well, you're here, byon. You should have just told Mukuro-san what he wanted!"

Of course not. Never. I resolved this in my head; the future should never be uncovered. I would protect it with my life.

Shuddering, I hoped with all my heart it wouldn't come to _that._

"Here." Chikusa put me down a little roughly next to the doorway and immediately closed and locked the door again. And just in time too, as a tonfa clashed into the doorway. The person holding it immediately collapsed afterwards though, and it was with widened eyes that I saw the state Hibari was in.

He was dirty, but that wasn't the main issue. The main issue was that it wasn't _dirt_ he was stained with, it was _blood._ I've never seen so much of it before. I mentally gagged at the metallic tang I could smell even from here, which indicated something like he was still bleeding.

And with that thought in mind, I half crawled half dragged myself to where he was, which luckily wasn't far.

"Hibari."

His previously unfocused eyes snapped to me and he raised a tonfa until he realised who I was.

"You. Sunglasses."

"Yes, me with the sunglasses. Let me see you." I nodded while reaching out. His right arm was visibly broken, and he had breathing difficulties.

"No." He pushed me away with his left arm. Although it was strong, it was shuddering.

How were those two _fighting?_

Thinking back on it, Mukuro seemed to be favouring his left arm back then…

"Broken arm." I said firmly, pointing to it. "Needs to be set. Best sooner rather than later. How long have you been here?"

He didn't budge for a minute or two, staring at me but I waited. Close contact to him might've seemed like an overload of crowding but then he nodded. Well, more like twitched his head in the smallest down motion. I took it as a yes and proceeded to try and find something for a splint. Seeing a clean-ish metal pipe hanging down from the opposite corner, I dragged myself over and forced myself to stand up, snapping it and dragged myself back to him.

I inspected it for things that would make it… too dirty to be used and deemed it good. Then I started unwrapping the bandages on my sprained ankle and ripping the dirty parts off, putting the clean ones and the pin carefully to one side. Looking at Hibari, I pointed to his arm.

"I'll try and inspect it now."

He grudgingly held it out, and I shuffled closer and carefully took it in my hands, prodding it only gently. It was a clean break, fortunately, as I only _knew_ how to fix clean breaks.

I wish I paid more attention in SPNo.3's class…

"This will hurt."

Hibari merely closed his eyes and leaned into the wall, as if he didn't have fractures and bruises and sprains. I was impressed; most people I knew would have been crying by now.

"Three, two, one." I counted down to prepare him and as quickly as I could, I set it back in place to the best of my ability. Hibari's face only twitched. Trying not to test his patience, I quickly picked up the thin metal rod and put it next to his arm, which was strangely the perfect length.

Wrapping around his arm was a bit tricky, and I had to apologise a few times for pulling too hard before I fixed it in place with the pin. Then I surveyed my handiwork.

Pretty good regarding circumstances…

I wanted to recheck my work (was the bone still a bit off?) but Hibari grunted and opened his eyes. Then he shuffled a little away from me before settling down again, under a small window set high above with bars.

I imagined he said thank you, so I mentally said a 'you're welcome'.

Wincing at my sprained ankle, I wrapped it clumsily with the remaining dirty bandages and tied it off with a knot.

Then I settled down and sighed.

"How long have you been here, Hibari?"

Silence.

"One."

"Thank you."

There was no reply, and I glanced to see Hibari resting. I winced at the blood again, before settling down myself as comfortable as possible.

When in captivity, the most productive thing was sleep right? I wasn't really particularly nervous, I knew Tsuna would come save us.

So I slept to the strangely comforting sound of bird chirps…

* * *

"_What? Alice has been kidnapped?" Tsuna's face was shocked, more shocked than the letter from the Vongola Ninth in his hand._

"_Yes." Reborn said, his fedora covering his eyes. "We suspect by Mukuro. So get moving Tsuna, there are two things at stake here. Alice is an important part of your family."_

_Tsuna wanted to run away from all this; he usually did. But this time one question held him back._

"_Why would he want to kidnap Alice…? He's targeting me right? How can he drag innocent people in this?" Tsuna's hand clenched._

"_She's not entirely innocent, Tsuna." Reborn suddenly said. _

"_Huh?"_

"_You would have had to know sooner or later. Alice is from a famous information gathering family that is stationed all around the world."_

"_What?" Tsuna's hands shook._

"_They are world best, their information network is legendary. Normally you cannot but hope you would even catch a glimpse of one of them. Having a friendship with one is akin to a chance of one in a billion."_

"_Then why would she be here?" Tsuna mumbled, falling to lean on the wall. Reborn only looked at him, and Tsuna refused to think that one of his first friends came to… came to collect information on him instead of really being his friend. No, that wasn't true. He knew Alice._

"_Dame-Tsuna, do you want to go to stop Mukuro now?"_

"_I don't know. I don't know!" He suddenly burst out and started running down the corridor. "I never wanted any of this!"_

_Reborn could only watch his __student __running away, feeling Leon squirming in his hat. He took him out and held him at eye level. _

"_What will he become, Leon?"_

* * *

I was led to Mukuro the next day, and he was sitting on his couch again, smiling as usual.

"I wanted to have a chat with you. Here, please sit." He gestured to a chair that he didn't have before. I was lowered on it carefully by Ken (it was surprising to know Ken was more gentle with prisoners than Chikusa. I guess Chikusa just didn't care).

"I won't answer your questions, Mukuro."

"Kufufu…" Mukuro smirked. "I expected it. I just wanted to have a talk."

I raised an eyebrow, knowing anything relating to Mukuro wouldn't be 'just a talk'. He took a sip from a bottle he was holding and proceeded to smile again.

"I guess you have a mission." I nodded, apprehensive that I might slip something out. "Do you know where the basis of missions came from?"

What? I looked at Mukuro, the perfect picture of a normal high school student. But how would he know about matters like this? Shaking my head in a no, I rearranged my legs in a more comfortable position while thinking hard.

"I'll tell you. When things die," he said while he sipped, "all lives have to judged. But the most time-consuming ones are human beings." A grimace found itself onto Mukuro's face, but he continued. "People kept fighting one another, killing and dying, until the gate was overflowed. What shall we do? It's too full! All the people keeping track of the numbers cried out. So a solution was made."

I listened, already having heard this. But there was something in Mukuro's tone, something mocking in it that made me listen all the closer. Why was he telling me this?

"Why don't angels that usually keep track of other things other than death help out too? And so, the angels got put to work. But they knew nothing of judging, and made their own decisions on how to judge. Maybe if a person who loves trees is good! Maybe a person who kicks puppies is bad!"

"Where are you going with this, Mukuro?" I interrupted. Mukuro smiled and just ignored me.

"But then some realised their mistakes. An angel who put the people he was in charge of into stories found he couldn't stop, as putting people in changed the future of the world and he had to keep putting people in to stop the world going in new directions. Another found that the lives that he had tested broke down from the stress of it too quickly to judge. Problems came from everywhere, and there was mass panic.

"What shall we do? No-one knew, and individuals were put to correct their own mistakes. Only some could never be corrected again." He looked at his own hands with an unreadable expression on his face. "I wonder if you will be one of them?"

I put my best blank face on.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mukuro."

He smiled.

"Kufufu... Of course you don't. It was lovely talking to you. Maybe you will help me next time?"

I was dragged away with thoughts whirring in my head.

* * *

It was night time, but I couldn't sleep because I wanted to think. But I was too tired to think so I just lay there awake, feeling a slight breeze blowing through the window and shivering a little.

I think I was about to drop off to sleep when I heard… humming?

I opened my eyes a tiny bit, just a sliver so I could see through my eyelashes. Hibari was there, with a little yellow fluff-ball of a bird on his finger, singing the school song really softly to it. The bird cocked its head to the side and chirped loudly. Hibari shushed it by stroking it with his fingers, with a smile that, for the first time, wasn't blood thirsty or adrenaline filled.

Closing my eyes with a smile on my face, I decided that his smile really was quite nice.

* * *

It was Hibari's third day in this room, and my second. My stomach was gnawing itself in hunger, and really, I felt a bit faint.

They provided water, at least. Seeing their food made me glad I wasn't eating it though. It was all sweets. Major sweet-tooth in the vicinity.

Huh. I looked out the window, looking out into the sunlight. Mukuro's words were echoing in my brain.

_An angel who put the people he was in charge of into stories found he couldn't stop, as putting people in changed the future of the world and he had to keep putting people in to stop the world going in new directions…_

Bill. That was definitely Bill.

New directions… Maybe me stationed near Tsuna really wasn't a coincidence. Maybe…

An explosion shocked me from my thoughts, and I shuffled myself next to Hibari (who had become more tolerant of me?), who was sitting against the wall, one knee up and head down. Then Hibird came flying and landing, facing outside. I stared. What?

"Beaten! Beaten!" It said, with its high (and personally, cute) voice. Then… it started singing the Namimori Middle school song. I blinked. Hibari smirked, face partially hidden from view.

"It learnt it after all…" He muttered under his breath,

I held my breath. If I was correct, then…

Explosion, and the wall crumbling down in front of my eyes. I was glad I shuffled over to Hibari; I would've been pulverised under that concrete.

Lucky the wall was old. Otherwise the dynamite wouldn't have broken it, I'm sure…

"Hehe," a laugh came from someone in the smoke and dust. I muffled a cough into my sleeve, "You're the only one who likes our school song that much."

"Namimori Middle Disciplinary Committee Head Prefect, Hibari Kyoya." Chikusa stated Hibari's profile blankly, adjusting his glasses, looking a bit worse for wear.

"Haha! Is that half-dead guy supposed to be reinforcement?"

Hibari stood up smoothly, his eyes on the other tonfa that he had lost.

"I could have gotten out by myself, but… this works." I stared blankly at Hibari. It was _clear_ that we couldn't have gotten out. Oh well, pride is a hard thing to beat sometimes. "Leave those two to me."

Gokudera grinned. "Do as you wish."

As Hibari rushed forward for the fight, I dragged myself towards Gokudera.

"Hi, Gokudera. You're looking wonderful."

"Heh," He grinned, "you made Juudaime worry about you."

"I'll say sorry later. Can you walk?"

He prodded his own injuries with a trembling hand. "I don't know. Probably. Can you help me up?" I heaved him up to the best of my ability. "Argh, for Juudaime's right hand man to be reduced to this state…"

I sighed at his mumblings and looked over him. The bleeding on his chest was a bit concerning, but all in all… better than Hibari, that's for sure.

"Hmm." Hibari was suddenly in front of us again, and I stared up at him with wide eyes. Looking past him, I couldn't see a trace of Ken or Chikusa.

"Done already?"

A grunt in response and he single-handedly picked me up and slung an arm over his shoulder. I stared at him in confusion.

Oh right, he hates debts. I guess bandaging his arm would be a big one (on his terms).

"Oi! Don't leave me here!" Gokudera called out. Hibari paused, obviously thinking about something before continuing. Apparently his debt to me was greater to Gokudera's.

"Um Hibari, leave me here." He glanced at me. "I'm not really that good at fighting anyway, Gokudera would be more useful upstairs. I'll catch up.'

A dubious glance at my legs, but he let go without comment and went to Gokudera (wow, he was being really tolerant today). Hibird flew from his shoulder to mine, and started singing the school song. I watched Gokudera and Hibari stagger away with satisfaction; another plot point fulfilled.

Now for them to reach them in time. But I couldn't really help with that.

And so I started the long, arduous task of dragging myself towards the third floor. I finished dragging myself up to ground level.

Okay. Five corridors, one flight of stairs and a ladder to go.

Joy.

* * *

"_Gokudera-kun! Hibari-san! You're both!" Tsuna's eyes shined with happiness._

"_Do you understand now, Mukuro? Tsuna wasn't the only one I raised."_

_Gokudera grinned at his Juudaime happily (he was very happy about __the fact __he just saved his life in time) when Hibari glanced at him._

"_I've paid you back now." _

_Then he threw him away. Tsuna watched with surprised eyes._

"_My, my, there are lots of spectators today, aren't there? What is Chikusa doing?" Mukuro said with deceptive calm._

"_Heh. The glasses guy and the animal are both taking naps downstairs."_

"_I see." Mukuro murmured, clasping his hands together._

"_Way to go, Gokudera-kun!" Tsuna said happily. Gokudera laughed awkwardly and scratched his cheek._

"_It's not as if I beat them…" He muttered with a dejected face. "But oh, Juudaime!"_

"_Huh?"_

"_Alice is fine downstairs and is catching up to us now! No need to worry about her anymore." Tsuna breathed a sigh of relief, but got distracted by another voice._

"_Have you prepared yourself?" Hibari asked, picking up his tonfa._

"_You're very scary," Mukuro informed him, "but please don't get between me and Vongola. And besides," he said while looking away, "you can barely stand right now. I've broken many of your bones after all."_

_Hibari ignored him and turned around, holding up a tonfa. He was slightly ticked at being neglected for a _herbivore_ of all things. "Have you prepared your last will?"_

"_You say such annoying things. I have no choice; I better take care of you first."_

* * *

My arms were aching, but I lit up when I found the ladder. Ladder, then up, then the fight. I was nearing it at last!

After a while of dragging myself, I realised that walking on a sprained ankle and a leg full of holes was easier for stairs when you have a hand railing. So, even though I full well knew I was just making my leg condition worse, I walked on them.

Cursing with nearly every step, I was just glad it was slightly (slightly meaning a literal smidgen) faster, I walked/staggered/dragged myself towards the noises of metal clashing upon metal.

I was close, so close. The doorway was just there, and I went in just as Hibari collapsed. I sighed.

He overdid it again. But, as impressive as always, as expected of Hibari.

"Though you were totally useless in the battle with Mukuro." Reborn was telling Tsuna blankly. Tsuna's mood didn't evaporate though (not much, anyway) and he beamed, and Reborn smirked and I was just glad to see a face that was friendly and wasn't Hibari's. I slid down to lean against the wall and grinned, calling out to Tsuna.

"Tsuna."

He looked over and took a double take at my state.

"Alice! What did he do to you?" He rushed over.

"Nothing. Just that I think the bandages for my back need serious changing. That's all."

He sighed in relief.

"Ha, I was so worried…" Then he looked at Hibari.

"Hibari-san! Are you okay?" He rushed over to him too. Gokudera staggered towards him, and Reborn looked over.

"I set his arm straight, but it's best for it to see a professional doctor. Are there any coming?" Reborn nodded, and I relaxed against the wall.

"He was fighting unconsciously near the end. He must've been really upset he lost to him before." Reborn started walking towards the little huddle around Hibari, making the understatement of the year. Whenever Hibari saw Ken or Chikusa when they gave us water, he flew at them.

Frankly, it made me resolve to try to stay out of Hibari's bad books.

I sighed and closed my eyes, their conversation a relaxing lull to my brain after days of silence. Maybe a nap would be nice…

* * *

"_Be careful, he might possess Gokudera or Bianchi."_

_Tsuna looked around him wildly. "Is Alice under the contract too?" He looked at the sleeping Alice near the doorway. If Alice was possessed, he would never be able to dodge, she was too fast._

"_Kufufufu… you will have to see." Mukuro laughed in Gokudera's body._

* * *

I woke to a flash of green light and heat, and then with tired eyes I saw Tsuna lying face down, with gloves on his hands.

Reborn walked over, and made a rare display of his mind reading powers.

"What you're hearing is an effect from the dying will bullet. You're hearing real time rebukes to you from others."

Tsuna lay still for awhile, then he suddenly sat up. His voice… was deeper.

"Mukuro… If I don't defeat you, I can't die in peace." He looked up, and his forehead bore the flame of the dying will, his eyes orange. My eyes widened. Amazing.

I studied Tsuna as the others were talking.

A definite plus was how he retained his clothing, as well as the eyes. It was filled with determination. Not mindless determination like the normal dying will bullet, but a determination that you know would succeed, no matter how long it takes.

It was… reassuring. Dependable. Trustworthy, I guess. A totally different Tsuna. But I guess this was an aspect of Tsuna well hidden down under years of bullying and verbal abuse.

The fight raged on between them two, and I watched with wide eyes as they fought it out, with Mukuro realising the extent of Tsuna's abilities.

Amazing. That's the only word for the what I felt when I was sitting there. There really wasn't much to think about, just action and more action. And the more I watched, the more I felt that… I don't know, I wanted to be there. To fight, you know, be one of the team who was dependable.

But was I even suited to be a fighter?

I was so engrossed in my thinking I didn't notice an attack coming my way from Mukuro, dark aura waves lapping towards me. Narrowing my eyes, I tried to escape, but found that I couldn't, really couldn't, move my legs.

Mukuro, I guess, was trying to get a hostage to threaten Tsuna with, as both Bianchi and Gokudera were out. Closing my eyes, I resigned myself before…

Sudden speed and flying. I opened my eyes to see I was being carried by Tsuna towards the side of the room where Reborn was.

"…Tsuna?"

"Be careful." He said, looking down at me. He placed me carefully beside Gokudera and Bianchi, and Reborn nodded to his student's unworded question of _take care of them please._

And with his comrades safe, Tsuna rose into the air once again, ready to face Mukuro.

* * *

**Hyper Dying Will Tsuna is awesomely cool. It should be a crime that a character can be cute and cool all at once. XD Haha!**

**Well, since I'm nearly delirious, I think should sleep. Please review, I really want to hear your thoughts on this. I was so worried about Mukuro, is he even in character? I read over his parts in the manga, watched him in the anime, read popular fanfictions with Mukuro (yeah, I felt like a stalker fangirl...) but he didn't seem to want to go on the page. So question of the chapter; was he okay?**

**Oh, and my poll seems to be not working. Dunno why, but I've made three polls exactly the same and put each of them out and tried it out myself; none of them worked. So now I'm just counting majority of reviews and PMs. Her being a Guardian and a meddling like a meddling old grandma seems to be taking the lead.**

**Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy this. Bye until next time. ^^**


	18. A few visits,

**New chapter! I know, only one week. Why? Reason is at the end of the chapter, and also because I'm becoming excited for future chapters. XD**

**Thank you for your all so kind reviews. TT_TT I read them over multiple times, please believe me. Thank you, also, to my sister who I nagged into reading this when she wanted to go internet surfing (and it is also because of her this chapter is out so early, ^ ^)**

**Please enjoy! (This chapter is epic length. O_O Don't expect it to be this long all the time, okay? XD)**

* * *

I could only watch, helpless, as Tsuna and Mukuro fought it out, flinging each other, talking softly and then clashing again, trident against flaming gloves. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but I could imagine. Tsuna fighting with dying will, Mukuro and his angry dark aura, it was so breathtaking to watch.

Sitting there, at the side of the whole thing made me feel awed. I knew for one that if I was in there for more than a minute, my legs would give out or something and I would get skewered by a trident (or something as bad as that).

Inspiring, amazing, breath-taking... and depressing.

Depressing because I knew I couldn't do anything like that.

Watching as Mukuro finally fell, crashing on the other side of the room and Hyper Will Tsuna only stared at him calmly, quietly, I imagined him talking with a little regret, a little sadness in his voice because I couldn't hear what they were saying. In the middle of Tsuna's speech however, Ken and Chikusa crawled towards Tsuna. They were pitiful, but the collars that bound their necks were ominous, and slightly depressing. I felt them even before they came; Vendicare.

Their bandages were flapping in an imaginary breeze. Nothing showed except a tell-tale gleam of their eyes, and their voices were like ice.

And did one of them glance at me?

But I was not really paying attention. I was in my own thoughts.

Sitting to the side, doing nothing but watching, was this how I wanted my whole second life to be?

What was the point of my second life anyway? My mission was Tsuna, protecting him. But I already knew that he would be fine; the manga, the anime, all indicated that Tsuna would be fine after everything. So what was I protecting him against? Could it be what Mukuro said, about Bill preventing change? I looked up, just in time to see Mukuro, Ken and Chikusa being dragged out of the door, helpless against Vendicare.

So I was supposed to protect Tsuna from change?

But what _if_ I was supposed to prevent change? How could I help Tsuna when I was so useless? How could I protect him when he was stronger than me? Even in the little room where I was locked, I expected Tsuna to save _me_, not _me_ getting out by _myself_. I was already depending on the plot to soothe my fears that everything was all right.

And what if nothing was alright? If I was using the plot to soothe my fears, and I was supposed to prevent _change_ in the plot...

Dammit. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

Stronger, I had to get stronger. And maybe as I get stronger and be sufficiently able to protect Tsuna, I'll get answers.

That will be my hope.

* * *

Another school year was starting, but I couldn't attend because I was in a wheelchair.

Yeah, a wheelchair. Since both my legs were out of commission and the injuries in my back prevented me from any chance of using crutches. I wasn't particularly worried about studies like the other students; homework was more an annoyance than anything since I've already learnt it.

Today was important, however. Something Liza had said a while ago. I waited patiently in my apartment again, mentally preparing my questions.

"_After a while into your proper mission, Bill will send you things to remind you of the original plot of the story."_

_I looked up at her, tired after a day of running away and cramming information into my head._

"_How will you know when he will send it?" I asked as I wandered around my cupboards for clothes so I could shower._

"_A message will come for you! Don't worry; you__'ll__ know when it comes."_

_Liza laughed and ruffled my hair and I scowled, brushing her hands off me._

A huge poster-like message hung over my bed this morning with bright green letters saying "YOUR MATERIALS! Signed, Bill." so I knew it was happening.

I'll know when it comes indeed.

"Grey."

"Yes, Miss."

"Please call my weekly client up here?"

Grey frowned at my sudden out of character request (I usually tried to dodge my money-making duties), but nodded. Liza had mentioned Bill would only appear when I was completely alone. After a few minutes, the elevator opened and Grey stepped in, sliding the card and smiling a kind grandfatherly smile at me. I smiled back, but it dropped right after the elevator doors closed.

I waited, listening to anything that would tell me Bill was here.

My ears were rewarded with a grumble, and then suddenly someone slipped from under the table. "Gah, why must the series have so many books in it? Annoying…"

Bill was exactly as I remembered, cute dwarf looking, baggy jumper and pants. Looking at him, I nearly didn't believe what Mukuro said about him.

"Bill…"

"Sorry, I'm a bit busy, Alice. I still have a few deliveries to go." He huffed as he lugged a huge sack of what seemed like books from under the table, and he wiped a sleeve over a sweaty brow before bending down again.

"But I have some questions…" I tried to interrupt him.

"No time, sorry." He grunted as he started sliding back under the table, disappearing to who knows where. I started panicking. I needed answers!

"Bill! What did he mean by Judgement failures? What am I protecting Tsuna _for?_"

Bill froze for a few seconds, in which I waited impatiently for an answer. But then he moved as if nothing had happened.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Move along." He pushed the bag he deposited a little to the right, blocking my view of him.

"No, Bill!" I tried to move my wheelchair, but the carpet was too thick and I couldn't wheel my chair by myself without straining my back. "Wait!"

There was no answer.

I cursed, suddenly understanding why Hibari liked bashing things up so much when he was angry.

* * *

I went out, of course, meeting up with Tsuna and peoples (whenever I saw Tsuna, I remember him flying over Mukuro, voice flat and unchanging…) every weekend or so, and my foot slowly got better. Apparently, I walked on the sprain so much it developed into a fracture, so it took longer than usual.

My back healed fast, though, and soon I could hobble around on crutches. That was received with happy faces.

"Alice! You're back on your feet again!" Tsuna exclaimed happily, his eyes near sparkling with joy. I think he had harboured a secret guilt over my injuries (Tsuna would be like that).

"Yeah." I nodded, smiling a little at him. "My legs feel horribly weak though."

"Haha! Better not over exert yourself, Alice."

"Whatever, Yamamoto."

Yamamoto just laughed and hooked arms around me and Tsuna. "Now we're all together again!" Gokudera immediately burst out in one of his 'Don't be so friendly with Juudaime, baseball freak!' rants, and I scowled and tried to manoeuvre his arm from my shoulders without toppling off my crutches.

"Alice! You shouldn't climb chimneys like my big brother again, you hear me? You've missed nearly two weeks of school!"

The only person who would ever believe such a ridiculous story as that... I turned around and smiled at Kyoko (noting that Tsuna was blushing furiously… yet again. I wondered if Kyoko's obliviousness was just an act sometimes, seriously).

"Kyoko!" We hugged awkwardly, her avoiding my crutch and me trying to stay balanced without leaning on her too much.

"Alice, without you your fans have been wilting, you know." A dry voice came from behind the orange mop of hair that was dominating my vision. I grinned and looked around Kyoko's head, arm safely around my crutch again.

"Hana."

We both smirk/smiled at each other and understood each other perfectly. Kyoko looked between us two before she sighed, and shook her head.

"Hana, do you want to come with me to the library to study? I'm having a bit of a problem with my math…" Kyoko smiled sheepishly at her. There was a pause, and then I blinked at Hana. She usually replied with an immediate 'yes!' but today…

Was Hana blushing? Oh, future Ryohei, you have competition…

"Sawada-san promised that I could meet the really handsome guy I saw a few weeks ago…" She looked up with a dreamy look on her face. "He might be the man of my dreams!"

Kyoko's face fell and she turned to me, blatantly ignoring (or just plain not noticing), the ruckus behind me with Gokudera running chasing Yamamoto in circles, Tsuna having a deadpanned expression on his face, and Hana staring romantically to the sky. Kyoko herself had pink sparkles practically oozing out of her, and she turned her shining eyes towards me.

What a strange bunch of friends.

"Then Alice, can you please…?"

I changed my scowl to a (I think) natural smile.

"Of course, Kyoko." She cheered and hugged me, forgetting about my crutch, which led me to fall on Hana, who flailed and hit Tsuna on the face, which Gokudera yelled at and Yamamoto tried to calm down the situation.

Very much a domino effect. I smiled, feeling lighter than I have been for the past few weeks.

If this was normal… I hobbled back a little and made a mental snapshot.

Then I don't want anything to change.

* * *

"Mafia-land?" I asked Grey.

"Yes, Miss." He seemed quite happy with himself. "I got some tickets because you were looking a bit stressed for the past few weeks and you recently got out of your wheelchair. Your crutch is only a safety precaution, anyway."

I grinned.

"I would love to! How are we getting there?"

"Oh, by plane. We're leaving at…" he checked the ticket, "at four."

"Let's get packed, Grey!"

Grey raised an eyebrow at me, and I faltered. What? "I have already packed, Miss."

At that, I laughed, realising I was a bit of an idiot. Of _course_ Grey the perfect butler would already be prepared. "Why wait? Let's get down there already." I continued, grinning my face off.

Who wouldn't, in the prospect of visiting one of _the_ best amusement parks in the world?

* * *

This was _heaven._ I sighed happily, holding a cup of iced chocolate shake while waiting in line for a ticket to get into the mirror house.

Oh how I love mirror houses. I tipped my hat out of my eyes, unafraid of rich swarms now that I had my long forgotten contacts on.

"Grey!"

"Yes, miss."

"Drop the Miss already. Anyway, aren't you excited?" I bounced on the soles of my feet excitedly. "It's a _mirror house!"_

"Yes, yes," He said as he smiled down in a grandfatherly way. He put a calming hand on my head, and I stopped bouncing and just kept sipping my drink. Then I sucked a whole lot in at once and scowled when I got brain freeze.

"One adult one child." Grey said politely to the lady, and she nodded, bored. "How much money?"

"Fifteen." She said shortly, and Grey handed the required money over before receiving the tickets. My eyes lit up as I soon as I saw them.

"Mirror house Grey, mirror house!"

Grey laughed, but let himself get dragged. I bet we looked like a grandpa and granddaughter duo with the grandpa being dragged by his overexcited granddaughter. We reached it, finally, and as Grey handed over two of the tickets, I dove right in.

I've always loved mirrors. I waved at a squat and stubby version of me and walked to the next one, with me being over two metres tall and a face over half a metre long when I leaned forward. I grinned and put my head backwards back to the one that made me short and stubby; it made my grin stretch wider than a Cheshire cat's.

Running around (there was a mirror trick that made a well look infinitely deep, but when I reached in it was only about five centimetres. There was another that made me look like I was flying, and a third one that made me look like I only had a head floating around), I dragged Grey along everywhere with me. He didn't really seem to mind, it seemed he was intrigued as I was.

I got a pleasant (or unpleasant; whichever way you view it) surprise when I heard sobbing. I narrowed my eyes at my seven reflections. That sounded _really _familiar...

"Lambo-sama is not lost at all…" A kid sniffed, and a high pitched voice followed afterwards.

"Lambo make us get lost!"

"Did not!" Another few huge sniffs. "To-le-rate…" the little voice continued miserably. The objects of the two voices rounded the corner and it was a few seconds later that the fact I was standing there even registered in their brains.

It was comical, watching their reactions. Lambo's face literally went like this – teary, sniffy, SMILE…with snot. I-pin's was a more normal reaction, with her face going from worry to a bright smile.

"Alice-nee!"

"Bwahaha, Alice! Lambo-san just went on a big adventure!"

They both ran towards me, and I suddenly got two armfuls of kids (plus snot) practically yelling stuff at me. At least, Lambo was yelling at me. So I shushed them to the best of my ability while wondering where Grey suddenly went.

"Miss, I went to buy them this."

Grey appeared from behind my left elbow, holding up two massive lollipops. Lambo immediately reacted, making grabby hands. Grey chuckled before making his grandfather face again. "Here you go, little master."

Lambo laughed as he held his lollipop and then immediately started licking. I-pin was, as usual, more polite and thanked Grey (which Grey smiled wider at) and started nibbling at the edge. I grinned at their two entirely different eating methods; even in eating _lollipops_ they were different, but they were so close.

I chuckled and started moving, moving on to the next mirror exhibit, my arms comfortable with them two in them (they were heavy, but it was a weight I could stand… to an extent, of course).

It was fun, I guess. Lambo was entirely too engrossed in his lollipop and clutching at my shirt (the latter being the thing that was entirely too cute) that he didn't create much of a fuss except for some comments here and there. I-pin was as well behaved as always, running around but not too far away from me.

"Well, this is the last one."

We all stared at the single, lone paper cherry blossom tree in the middle of this last room. It was painted pink on the leaves, brown for park and just a hint of green. But there weren't any mirrors I could see until…

Gasping, we all gazed around us when we entered. Somehow, the mirrors were arranged in a way that it seemed a forest of cherry blossom trees were growing around us. And there was a spot on the floor, marked with a red circle, that when you stepped inside the mirrors wouldn't reflect you mirrors so that it really _did_ seem like a forest.

"Beautiful…" I-pin said with her eyes wide. I nodded and playfully bopped her braid.

"Yes."

"Lambo-san has a forest much better than this!" Lambo boasted, though his face said the exact opposite, with the lollipop drooping in his hand, forgotten. "But this is very pretty too…"

We stood there, admiring the still forest of Sakura trees when Grey looked at the watch and gave an exclamation of alarm.

"Oh, it's nearly two! There was an event we wanted to watch!"

I started, remembering that event. It was a once a week parade thing. Grey's eyes seemed to light up when he saw that on the timetable, and well, he deserved a break once in awhile, right?

"Let's go then!" I started out of the room. "Come on, I-pin."

We headed out of the house, me totally content. We squinted a little in the light, but we reached the event house on time. The event finished after twenty minutes, with Grey watching happily throughout it all.

Lambo decided he wanted to play on the beach, and so we headed there.

"Eh, Nana-san!"

"Alice, didn't I say to call me Mama? Oh, Lambo and I-pin! I was so worried about you!" Lambo immediately jumped towards Nana, calling her "Mama!"

Nana turned to me and bowed a little. "Thank you for finding them!"

"Oh, it's alright really…" She started back to the beach, and I stretched a bit before seeming to hear screams.

"What was that…? Let's go, Grey."

Grey sighed, but since I was planning on just kicking water at the beach anyway, it wasn't much of a loss. As I thought, a few metres into the foliage around the beach there was a metal fence, which, when I listened to closely, there was a small buzz.

Electric fence, huh? I shrugged, since my body shouldn't feel effects of electrocution. But… I glanced back at Grey.

"I'll wait here, Miss. I don't think I'm up to climbing fences." Grey smiled at me.

I grinned at him (Grey always knew what I wanted without asking; I bet he developed telepathic powers so that he could win the best grandpa/butler award) and started climbing, feeling the hair rising up on my arms and legs and strangely enough, even the hair on my head, before hopping down on the other side. When I put my finger to dirt, I literally felt the electric charge leave me through the finger.

"Bye, Grey." I waved at him in my usual way, a bit slowly, as my high from the excitement of the mirror house faded.

He bowed a perfect butler bow. "Have a good time."

I walked forward and saw… Tsuna being flung into a whirlpool?

"Whoa, Tsuna!" I cried as I jogged up towards the cliff edge. Tsuna's eyes widened in joy in seeing me.

"Heb me Abice!" He tried to yell through a mouth full of water.

"Uh… okay. Wait a minute…"

"I dod hab a midud!" He gurgled as I looked around for something long. I got a sturdy looking vine before an oversized gun barrel stopped my hand.

"Who are you, hey?" Colonello stared up at me, stern look on his face. I was surprised; didn't he see my eyes?

Then I remembered; oh right. I had contacts. I took one off, and he widened his eyes. I grinned.

"Yeah, nice to meet you."

"She's in Tsuna's family." Reborn said, jumping out of nowhere (as usual). Colonello turned his eyes towards him.

"She joined that loser's family?"

Reborn frowned. "He is a loser, but he's still my student, Colonello."

He shrugged and grinned (or smirked?) up at me. "Well I'm Colonello, hey. You're Brighteye, know I'm much better than Reborn, right?"

Reborn frowned deeper.

"Of course she knows that _I'm_ stronger, Colonello."

Colonello snorted. "As if, hey."

A strangled gurgle came from the whirlpool and I started. "Oh right, I have to rescue Tsuna."

Tsuna gave a helpless gurgle and sank.

* * *

"Did you fail as well?" Colonello asked a newcomer who had been dropped off by the subway. Naito Longchamp was standing there, huge grin on his face.

"Haha, yeah! I failed on how to get the bribe to him!"

Tsuna shivered a sympathetic yes.

"What's your name?" He grinned out, his eyes all squinted. "My name is Naito Longchamp, the eighth head of the Tomaso family!"

"S-s-sawada Tsunayoshi."

"Ah, Sawada-chan!" Tsuna gave him the blank eyes. Sawada-chan? Then Naito turned to me, still with the squinty eyes.

"And who are you?" He opened his eyes then, and he immediately jumped back ten metres back. "Ah! I don't like your eyes! Why are they so yellow! They freak me out!"

I blinked. "Umm, sorry." I put on my contacts, and Longchamp breathed a long sigh of relief. "That's a lot better! Hey, Sawada-chan, do you like my girlfriend, Kune-tin?"

"H-huh?" Tsuna stuttered, eyes bulging out. Yeah, I was asking myself too. How did a person like _him_ get a girlfriend?

Then I saw the picture and I could only sit and stare.

"Yeah, she's so beautiful! Don't you think so?" He looked expectantly at us. Tsuna was too shocked to make a reply, but I shook my head violently. His face dropped. "No?"

A gunshot from far away, and suddenly Longchamp was crouching, drawing circles in the dirt. And when did he get his shirt off?

"My past has been darkness, my future will be darkness…" I stared. That was overdoing it a little… Was that a _mushroom _growing out of his forehead? "People don't understand my taste in women… they say they hate girls like that but they're so cute… " He continued muttering.

I certainly did _not _understand his taste in, umm, women. He continued muttering "…but people don't like me because of it and I'm a social outcast!" He suddenly burst into huge tears. "People shouldn't judge just based on what I like, right?"

I was totally deadpanning. Nothing else could really go through my brain except for _"what the heck has he been smoking?"_

But the more amazing thing, for me, was that Tsuna was actually affected.

"Naito-kun…" He said, reaching out with sympathetic shiny eyes.

I stared at Tsuna in shock.

"But anyway," Longchamp suddenly jumping up enthusiastically, mushroom suddenly shrinking back into his forehead, "she was apparently a spy from the Calcassa family, and now we're under attack!"

And right on time, an explosion suddenly sounded over screams. The intercom system buzzed to life. "We're under attack! Please proceed under the nearest shelter; we're now in combat mode."

I sighed and clapped Tsuna on the shoulder. And with a little grin, I shoved him on the shoulder. "You time to shine, Mafia boss."

His mouth gaped open, and closed, and open, and closed…

I left him like that. I really wasn't bothered about Mafia wars.

* * *

I was walking beside Tsuna one day, watching the other two go at it (well, Gokudera more than Yamamoto), when I leaned towards Tsuna.

"Hey, Tsuna?"

"Yes, Alice?"

I smiled and ruffled his hair, then pointing his head towards Kyoko talking to some boys. He turned red in embarrassment when Kyoko caught him staring at her and waved.

"You should put a move on Kyoko soon. She's oblivious to your feelings right now, and you wouldn't want her to get stolen from somebody else, eh?"

Tsuna stared at Kyoko with a defeated look on his face.

"But I'll never be able to compare… Look at them, they have so much more to offer to Kyoko-chan. And anyway," he continued to say, staring at his shuffling feet, "At Kokuyo Land, I realised that I nearly dragged Kyoko-chan into a life threatening danger. I don't want to do that again…"

I frowned and bumped his shoulder.

"That's not true. Look at Kyoko, she likes you too. The ultimate decision belongs to her, if she stays by you or not." Tsuna looked at me, and I kept talking. "You don't have a right to stop being a friend to her. Anyway," I looked slyly at Tsuna, "you were plenty manly when you were fighting Mukuro, eh?"

Tsuna blushed and nearly stumbled.

"Th-that was…"

"I know, I know." I teased him, feeling uncharacteristically friendly from a whole day of no fans mobbing me, and gave him a hair ruffle. Then I gave him a sisterly hug. "Don't give up, okay?"

Tsuna turned red, got a nosebleed.

What?

…Was that too much oestrogen for Tsuna to handle or something? Then I turned around to see Kyoko was smiling her pink sparkle smile at Tsuna, and jogging to catch up to us.

Heh. I grinned as I shoved Tsuna (who glanced at me before going to Kyoko), towards her, they were too adorable together.

"Umm… Alice-sama?"

The grin on my face froze as I turned around to stare at the boy behind me, who was looking down and shuffling his face eerily reminiscent of Tsuna not two minutes ago.

"I was wondering…"

Did I jinx myself when I thought about no fans mobbing me today? I began to send the boy telepathic messages to go away.

"…if you had any free time this weekend?" The boy looked up into my face hopefully. All around me, I saw a lot of suspiciously male presences turn and stare at us, all sending out hopeful vibes.

I sighed inwardly before arranging my face into a more appropriate expression.

"Umm…"

Was it okay if I didn't address him by name? I mean, I've never even seen this guy before…

"… I've already got plans for this weekend." I smiled as friendlily as I could.

Instead of looking sad at getting rejected though, the boy perked up, his face lighting up with a smile that nearly split his face in half.

I stared in bewilderment. I just rejected him and this guy was _beaming_?

"Thank you, Alice-sama. I know you're a busy person, so I won't bother you anymore." The guy bowed, still beaming, and bounced back to his friends, who were sitting a short distance away from where I was standing. Immediately after he sat back down, they immediately looked in my direction, whispering something or other.

I saw quite a few of them mouth 'smile'.

I groaned silently and refused to think about what the 'smile' entailed…

Gokudera, who had finally finished arguing with Yamamoto, looked at me and smirked.

"Your smile looks constipated, freaky eyes."

I tried to muster up the energy to scowl at him, but it was too hard… so I glared at him instead.

Behind him, Yamamoto laughed. "Now now, they look like nice people. Are they your new friends?"

I glared at him too. Yamamoto was cool, but sometimes he was just too oblivious. After a while, even maintaining my glare at the smirking Gokudera and laughing Yamamoto was too tiring.

Sighing, I began to trudge away. Fan boys were so energy consuming…

At least… I glanced at Kyoko chatting to Tsuna and Tsuna blushing, glancing desperately at… me? I summoned the energy to grin and waved at him, to which Tsuna slumped and succumbed to the tomato-like blush that seemed to be creeping all over his face.

* * *

"Hey, want to come swimming, Alice? Tsuna needs to learn how to swim."

I can't swim either… Looking up at Yamamoto, I scratched the back of my head sheepishly.

"Sorry, I have something to do. Maybe next time?"

"Haha, busy with the assignment? I should be doing it too…" We laughed it off, and Yamamoto left with Tsuna. And when Tsuna left, Gokudera immediately started trailing him.

I cursed Mukuro in my brain, now obligated to do something about his… situation.

_I was sleeping. Being a deep sleeper, I usually remember dropping off into sleep and thinking I was waking up the next second. But not this time._

"_Huh? Where is this place?"_

_I looked around, seeing a bunch of mirrors in a corner of a grey room. Seriously, the whole room was grey. Light grey walls, dark grey ceiling (with pictures of stars printed on it), and… a royal blue floor. The curtains were yellow though. The exact yellow of my eyes._

_Grimacing at the curtains (grey and blue were two of my favourite colours but _yellow?_), I wandered towards the window, bypassing a strange oval glass table in the middle of the room and a small couch. _

_Outside was an explosion of colour, extremely contrasting with the inside of my room. On the right, I think I saw a huge yellow ball of fluff in the air singing the Nami-chu anthem with all my friends underneath clapping and singing along. On the left was a road that was blocked __by a wall__, but looking over the wall, I saw my family from my first life. The sky was a myriad of orange, pink, green… actually, any colour but blue._

_This was strange. Definitely strange._

"_Kufufu… Seems like I can enter your mind now."_

_I whirled around, my eyes widening at Mukuro sitting on the couch and sipping tea, his leg crossed. Blinking, my thought processes immediately blamed this strange room on Mukuro._

"_You. Where am I?" I gestured to the room, and the weird ornaments in it. On the other side of the room, I registered that there was __a__ table full of blank picture frames. But I ignored that for now and sat down on a couch that suddenly appeared._

"_You're in your mind. This has nothing to do with my making. I'm merely visiting."_

_I raised an eyebrow, looking over my shoulder to look out the window to see trees dancing, sing-a-long style with… 'Be a Man'? _

"_Be a man, you must be swift as a coursing river…" The trees yelled out, doing fake martial arts moves. Some moved so violently they looked like they were going to rip their roots out._

_I sighed and bashed my head against a wall that literally appeared from nowhere._

"_What the heck am I thinking?"_

_Mukuro was looking __at me__ with interest, elegantly raising an eyebrow at the wall that appeared, it seems, just for me to bash my head on._

_He laughed and leaned forward. "I admit that this is one of the more interesting minds I've come to have happened upon."_

_I frowned, rubbing my forehead a little. "Speaking of minds, how did you get in here? Didn't you say you couldn't just, err, ten days ago?"_

"_Kufufu… It seems it had a slow effect. You see my trident?" He held up his trident. "Well, it lets me gain entrance to a person's subconscious mind and control the conscious mind from there. It just seems the effect on your type is weaker. I can't possess you, but I can get into your dreams."_

_I groaned. "I don't need a guy stalking my dreams, thank you."_

_This time, he was the one frowning. "I don't _stalk_, I _visit."

_In my head, I smirked. Whatever makes you happy, Mukuro. _

_Not that Mukuro was looking at me anymore, instead focusing on something outside the window behind me._

_I turned around and blanched. Outside, huge multi-coloured Lego blocks spelled out 'WHATEVER YOU SAY MUKURO' in the sky._

_Coughing lightly, I tried to regain Mukuro's attention… from whatever was outside right now. After all, he had to have come for a reason. _"_So what's the reason for your _visit_ this time, then?"_

"_I need to have someone who has enough resources to get my new host body Nagi to Kokuyo land to meet Ken and Chikusa." __Mukuro said absently as he kept staring out the window._

"_And why me?" He smiled and leaned backwards__ to look at me__._

"_Because I know you will." _

_I massaged my temples, trying to ignore the new song that was blaring outside my window. Was that Haru singing Enka? _

"_Deal. Where is she?"_

_He smiled, his eyes crinkling up again. "I think you can find out yourself."_

_I sighed and waved a hand, knowing that was true with the network. "You owe me."_

"_We'll see about that." He said with one of his more mysterious tones, which made me remember about what he was saying before, about the angels and Bill…_

_As my thoughts changed, I noticed a choir of angels __had __started singing to an enraptured Tsuna and co. _

"_Well, I'll take me leave now. Please remember your task, and let her meet Ken and Chikusa first. I will take care of things from there." I was opening my mouth, fully intending to ask about Bill when he looked around with a raised eyebrow. _

_Without my mind telling it to, my mouth changed the question. "What's so strange?"_

"_Kufufu… Have you noticed that this room has no exits to the outside except the window? You don't even have a door." He leaned forward, suddenly closer, and a feeling of déjà vu came across me when he whispered in my ear yet again. _

"_Are you feeling trapped by something?"_

_And before my shocked mind could even get out a murmur, he disappeared, leaving me with a suddenly stormy sky outside. I looked outside to the suddenly stormy sky __as __it started raining. __Only __it wasn't raining water, but pages of paper that were falling from huge open books in the sky._

_Was I feeling trapped?_

_I shivered, and the room sprang a fireplace. _

_It was amazing how Mukuro could decidedly creep me out every time he talked to me._

And that was how it was. So now I had to get to Chrome.

I had researched her, and I was surprised to see that she was on Hokkaido. I scowled. No wonder Mukuro chose me. The other people that he knows are practically criminals and we would need a private jet to get Chrome here to Namimori (or more accurately, Kokuyo).

Heh. He does love using people, Mukuro.

Printing out the page that contained the hospital Chrome was currently in, as well as the address and asking Grey to arrange the flights and the transport needed to get to her and back, we set off.

What a pain…

* * *

"I am here to collect Nagi."

The nurse raised an eyebrow at me, no doubt thinking it weird that it was me talking and not Grey. "We only have one Nagi here, and she is currently being inspected by doctors from her miraculous recovery. It would be impossible for us to let you…"

She trailed off from a glare from me. He throat moved up and down, gulping before she tried to visibly calm herself. "Threatening is against the hospital protocol…"

I smiled, still pinning my glare at her. Infusing my business tone into it, I leaned forward. "What threatening? I am merely here to ask about Nagi and retrieve her as I have details saying she is fine."

The nurse rolled her chair farther away from me, a drop of sweat rolling down her face. I could see she was visibly trying to look away from my eyes, so I blinked to let her some reprieve.

"I-I'll see what I can do."

And she hurried away. I smiled at Grey, who was frowning at me.

"That wasn't needed, Miss."

"But this hospital is known for rejecting visitors, Grey. If I didn't, we would've gotten kicked out."

Anyway, seeing the reactions were fun. People I interacted with everyday were already used to them so they weren't afraid (since they knew me), good Hitmen weren't afraid of me (they were too professional for _that_) and well... It was fun? He sighed and shook his head. But then he smiled the tiniest bit to show his understanding (and disapproval). I nodded.

Chrome had been moved from the normal hospital straight after her recovery to a special, research undertaking one. It was renown, and practically any patient here had miraculous recoveries or had a disease that was hard to cure.

It was a good hospital. But Chrome needs to be taken away after all.

A doctor came bustling in with the nurse I had questioned. He pinned me with a look, and I smiled and bowed a little.

"Hello… Ichisawa-san." I said, after looking at his name tag. "My name is Sukumi Hana, and I'm here to pick Nagi up as per her father's wishes."

"Do you have any proof?"

I smiled, and showed him the real document that her father had faxed me. He apparently had been harassed, not wanting a step-daughter who might 'drag down his company's reputation'. Then he told me that I could have her after a few short sentences and some money.

How caring. I saw the doctor look over them and sigh, indicating to the nurse and muttering some short words to her. She nodded and walked off, albeit a little fast.

He indicated me to follow him into the hospital, and I did. "Her organs practically regrew themselves in a night, restoring her from critical to a healthy condition after her bad car crash. We had wanted to see what made this sudden growth, but tests haven't indicated anything abnormal and you've come…"

I smiled sympathetically.

"Sorry, Ichisawa-san."

"I understand." He bobbed his head up and down distractedly. "We usually don't allow visitors in because we want them to see their relatives healthy all at once without false hopes."

"Mhmm…" I looked around curiously, noting there wasn't really much to see.

"Nagi is in here."

"Thank you." I bowed to him, he bowed back and left.

Chrome had been prepared, and was sitting there waiting for me in a hospital gown.

"Nagi, come here, I have a dress prepared for you." I dug around my bag until Grey delicately picked it up from his own bag and gave it to me with a little 'here, Miss.' Chrome giggled at my red face before widening her eyes and immediately stopping.

I gave it to her, and she put it on after I shooed Grey outside the door.

"Mukuro-sama told me that he would send someone to get me," she finally said shyly. I helped her zip it up and noticed how skinny she was. "He said I would recognise them by their eyes."

I hmphed. "I'm doing Mukuro a favour here; he owes me one after this."

Chrome turned those unbearably wide and innocence eyes (or technically, eye) at me. They could rival Tsuna's (if he got over his wimpiness).

"Do you not like Mukuro-sama?"

"Depends." Looking her over, I nodded to myself. "You're really pretty. Smile more, hey? Get a good impression from your future kind-of friends for life."

"You're not one of them?" Her visible eye quivered, and I backtracked.

"No, I'm just going to be one of your allies in the future," I grinned at her, "So might as well be friends." I thrust out a hand, expecting her to shake. She shook it delicately and smiled shakily.

"Thank you, Sukumi-san."

I winced at that and leaned forward. "Sukumi isn't really my real name, but I'll tell you when we're on our way to where Mukuro instructed me to take you. Okay?"

She nodded timidly, and I took her by one stick thin arm and led her outside, with Grey being the dutiful shadow. He kindly took out a coat for her to wear when she started shivering and gave her his grandfather disarming smile.

"Here, Nagi-san."

Taking it gently, she smiled prettily.

How did someone as innocent as Chrome get attracted Mukuro? I sighed, and thought about it long and hard. In the car, a confused Chrome was looking at me banging my head. Grey muttered, still kindly a "it's normal" to her and she nodded, accepting.

Innocent Chrome is the perfect host for sadistic, body-using Mukuro?

Imagining their worlds (Chrome's was a peaceful country-side with a glistening river and an occasional tree on a sunny day. Mukuro… wasn't his a dark, gloomy corridor that stretched endlessly?), I sighed yet again, deciding it was one of the wonders of the universe.

* * *

"So have you decided on a name yet?" I asked Chrome after our trip back to Namimori airport, after watching her carefully eat a meal specially prepared for her. Light, but filling. And lots of it.

"I don't know, Bright-san."

"Didn't I say that you're going to call me Alice? I'm English. There, when a person calls you by your last name it's because you're particularly close or it's rude."

Chrome's eyes immediately widened, and her soft voice immediately started spewing out apologies.

I sighed yet again. "It was a joke, Chrome."

She looked at me, stopping her apologies to look at me. She had become more talkative during the plane trip (mainly because I forced her to) and she seemed to be opening up.

"W-what did you call me?"

Oh crap. I laughed nervously.

"Nothing."

She shook her head, long hair rippling. "No, say it again."

Looking at her eye, I melted.

"Well, see." I muttered, drawing her towards a chair. Grey was getting our luggage, so I had time. I thought of a lie on the spot. "On the plane trip I was thinking about your name as well." She nodded, big eyes serious. "And well, after hearing you say that Mukuro was your most important thing even after only meeting him three times or something, I thought of a name. I don't know if you'll like it though…"

"Please tell me." She urged. So I took out a pen.

"Well, my idea went like this. Did you know Mukuro's full name is Rokudo Mukuro?" She shook her head in response.

I wrote it out for her. Ro-Ku-Do-Mu-Ku-Ro. Then I rearranged it to Ku-Ro-Mu-Do-Ku-Ro.

"And that's it." I finished lamely. "And since Kuromu kind of sounds like the word Chrome in English, I called you that."

She was quiet, her face blank. I found that she had the perfect poker face; the first similarity to Mukuro?

"What does Chrome mean? In English."

"Well," I laughed as I scratched my head, "its short for Chromium. Its uses aren't pretty though, but chromium makes pretty compounds. Chrome actually comes from the word khroma, which means colour."

Silence. I fidgeted. Did I blow the plot or something?

"Metal, but doesn't have pretty uses. But it makes pretty colours, and it came from a word that means colour?" She asked after a beat or two in her soft voice, face as blank as ever.

"Basically, yeah."

"I like it. Thank you for my new name, Alice-san."

I brightened up.

"You called me Alice! Now the next time, I can just force…" I stopped at her look and hastily changed my words, "…_persuade_ you to drop the suffix!"

She smiled at my enthusiastic response, and then looked towards Grey, who was holding our bags, in worry.

"Does he need help?"

"I don't think so."

Chrome was so nice.

"Miss, Nagi-san," Grey said, reappearing in front of us, "our car is ready." Chrome stood up and bowed to Grey.

"My name is Chrome Dokuro now, Grey-san. Please take care of me."

Grey raised an eyebrow but nodded, doing a perfect butler response. "I'm sorry for my mistake, Dokuro-san."

I dragged her away before she could spout apologies.

* * *

"What are _you_ doing here?" Ken snarled, jumping from his couch and pointing at me. "Are you going to rub it into our faces that Mukuro-san is… is…" He slumped, and Chikusa stopped him with a hand.

"What do you want?" Chikusa asked, direct as always.

I smiled easily. "Ken, Chikusa, I want you to meet the only person who can channel Mukuro right now in his situation."

So I moved to the side, pushing Chrome forward a bit. She tilted her head forwards, obviously shy and a bit frightened at Ken's outburst.

"Who's _she?"_ Ken openly spat, still a bit incensed. He obviously sensed how weak Chrome was right now.

"Chrome Dokuro." I easily replied, putting a reassuring hand on Chrome's shoulder. "I was instructed by Mukuro to lead her here to meet you two. Introduce yourself, Chrome."

She took three timid steps forward, and bowed. Then she looked up at them with a timid smile. "My name is Chrome Dokuro. Nice to meet you."

Ken stared at Chrome's face for the first time, and a blush spouted over his cheeks. Oh? I raised an eyebrow at him, which made him angry (or flustered; take your pick).

"How do I know I can trust you?" Ken burst out at me, him already turning his back and preparing to jump back onto his couch. Chikusa just stood to the side, staring at Chrome without much expression, but his eyes were calculating.

Two seconds after Chikusa also turned away from Chrome, wisps of mist started coming from Chrome's body. Dramatic wisps of the mist spread all across the room, and a shadow emerged from where Chrome once stood. Ken and Chikusa, when seeing the mist, whirled around just in time to see Chrome completing the change to Mukuro.

And there he stood, trident and all, to the shocked faces of his loyal subordinates.

"Mukuro-san!" They both exclaimed happily (Ken to a greater extent than Chikusa), and I started leaving, feeling a bit awkward and third-wheelish.

"Remember Mukuro," I said over my shoulder softly so as to not interrupt their reunion, "You owe me."

Mukuro flashed me an enigmatic smile and I left, walking towards Grey who had been waiting outside.

"Let's go. This whole venture has tired me out." I yawned into my sleeve, and Grey gently guided me towards the awaiting car.

"Yes, let's get some rest."

* * *

When I came back, Tsuna and co. had apparently left for the beach. So I lay there, having nothing to do, my doubts swirling around in my brain again.

Even if I wasn't to be a guardian, even if I wasn't Tsuna's main fighting force… If I was going to hang around Tsuna, I would need to know how to fight. Enough, at least, to be able to protect Tsuna and not the other way around.

…But how?

Rolling around, I grabbed the phone and phoned the Brighteye Mansion in Italy. The only person (though this was probably suicidal...) that I knew that could get me stronger in a short time was him...

"_You have called the Brighteye network. If you're here to make a request…"_

"Cut the talk, I'm number fifty Alice Brighteye on her mission."

"_Oh, Brighteye-sama! Can you please tell your code to prove your identity?"_

I sighed and muttered, "Yellow is my favourite colour in the world because I am obsessed about my eyes."

"_Identification correct." _Could I detect giggling? "_Who do you want to connect to?"_

"Jack, number fifteen."

"_Connection in progress…"_ A click, and suddenly Jack's voice. _"Alice, baby! How're you doing?"_

"Jack, I'm calling to ask you to train me in how to fight."

A pause, and a serious voice. "_…All Brighteyes have their designated weapon on the back of their requirement sheet you know. I'm sure you didn't notice, but there was picture etched to the bottom left corner of the page."_

"Oh no, I think I lost that page…"

"_That's okay. We record it down. You know what your weapon is, Alice?"_

"No…"

"_Chopsticks."_

…

"What did you say? Please tell me you're joking."

"_No, I'm actually very serious. I fight with kitchen knives for a reason, you know. But you already got lucky! Liza's weapon is a stress ball. It's totally useless. Haha! Bill did say that the weapon on the back of the sheet appears according to the person's personality! I guess your personality is like a chopstick!" _

He laughed over the phone, and I contemplated.

"So can you train me, Jack?"

"_Only when you prove you can use your chopsticks quite well. Then I'll start teaching you, baby!"_

"Okay, what do I need to do?"

"_Use your chopsticks to throw a ping-pong ball over your head and catch it on the other side perfectly. Then repeat this twenty times without dropping the ball once. That's the initial requirement."_

What? "But that's practically impossible, Jack!"

"_Well, too bad I guess. Work hard and then call me when you can do it, then! Ciao!"_

"No, wait!"

"… _What?"_

"I have to get strong _fast_ though, Jack!"

"_Oh. Okay then, err, I guess you can always learn a secondary weapon that's easier to master when you're trying to get used to your chopsticks… Oh! I know! Guns!"_

"Guns?"

"_Aim is easy to improve when you get the gist of it!"_

"Are you going to train me then, Jack?"

"_No! There's a professional Hitman right by your side!"_

"Who? Reborn?"

"_Haha, no! Grey, of course!"_

I blinked. What?

"Grey? Really?"

"_Yeah, he's nearly legendary. Just ask him to teach you while you try to get the hang of the chopstick trick. Bye now!"_

A click and the phone line turned dead. I looked at the phone incredulously.

Grey? Seriously?

I walked down the hallway to the kitchen, where Grey was looking perfectly grandfatherly like, cooking curry, occasionally smelling it and smiling. How can _Grey_ be a Hitman?

He was so… grandfatherly.

"Grey?"

He turned and smiled.

"Yes, Miss?"

Hesitating because I didn't know what to do (what if Jack had his facts wrong?), I frowned in resolve before I bowed deep from the waist, and staring at the floor, I practically yelled my question.

"Grey! Please teach me how to fight using guns!"

I waited with bated breath as I absently counted the floor tiles. I was up to twenty-one when there was a shuffle of clothing, and it was with an unaccustomed coldness of voice that Grey spoke to me.

"No."

* * *

**Gokudera Extra**

_When Gokudera was young, he thought he had been wanted, loved, cherished, and held close to the heart. The castle had been huge, and he remembered happy days of just exploring into the servant quarters, frightening some and laughing at the secrets of others._

_There were happy times where his father would sometimes swoop down, hold him and and rub his moustache into his face and he would twist and squirm, laughing and protesting. His sister would come at him with purple cookies, but once in awhile she would give him a hug that he would happily reciprocate._

"_How bright Hayato-kun is!"_

"_What a wonderful performance!"_

"_He is the hope of your family, isn't he?"_

_Gokudera basked in the praise, grinning cutely at them and smiling. He was fawned over, cared for, spoilt, pampered and he felt wonderful. Piano was his passion, and next were explosions._

_He was introduced to explosions when he was five and crying because the kind lady who came twice every year had disappeared for two years already. He had been wandering around aimlessly when he had happened upon a very… R-rated scene between a man and a maid of the house._

_Of course they stopped when they saw him, with the maid blushing a bit and bowing before buttoning up her shirt and hurrying away. The man had turned to him, looking fully prepared to scold him for interrupting before seeing the red eyes and tear tracks. Then, he raked his fingers in his hair and turned to a nearby window with some paper planes._

"_Want to see a cool trick, kid?"_

_Gokudera cocked his head to the side, intelligent already at that young age. The old man flicked them into the air and just as quickly flung bombs at them, making them explode. The little boy ran towards the window, tears forgotten and eyes shining._

"_That was amazing, uncle!"_

_The man winced at the use of uncle but ruffled the boy's hair anyway. "My name's Shamal, kid."_

_In response to this, Gokudera nodded and filed that name in a special place in his mind. _

_Shamal came and went, but each time he would teach him a new trick; where to hide bombs on the body, how to hold dynamite between your fingers without them falling out. Gokudera was happy whenever he mastered a trick, and loved the smile he got from his teacher._

_But one day, Shamal looked at him with disappointed eyes and left him, saying "I won't teach you anymore."_

_Gokudera was disappointed. He was spoilt, pampered, and knew nothing of the outside world. He did not understand why Shamal couldn't continue teaching him._

_The day Shamal left, he took a little bit of his passion for bombs away._

_But he still had piano. He played his heart out, itching to hear the praise. And in his heart, he still thought that maybe if he played well enough, that kind lady that had once visited would come and hug him with a smile brighter than the sun. But all of those childish thoughts were ruined on the day he headed towards the servant quarters to prank the maids of the house… and maybe even trick them to give him some cookies that weren't poisonous. _

_That day he overhead the secret that had been kept for years._

"_Ah? You haven't heard the rumour that the little master is spawned from one of the Master's affairs?"_

_At eight and well-educated, Gokudera understood what that meant instantly. And by just a few simple words, the life he knew was taken away._

_Because suddenly, Gokudera understood the expressions behind the smiles, the whispers behind his back, the mocking tone in their voices as they glanced at his father. It was the piece that solved the puzzle, showing a picture he did not want to see._

_His family had been a lie. _

_His life was a lie._

_The maids continued gossiping, unaware of the consequences of their words. "Then who was the woman who birthed the young master, then?" Gokudera held his breath, wanting to cry but stopping himself, knowing he would regret it if he didn't find this out._

My mother…_ He couldn't help but hope._ Maybe I can meet her…

"_Oh, you know, that piano player," the maids continued to gossip, "But she died in an impossible car accident when she was trying to deliver her present for the young master's third birthday or something…"_

_And there, his passion for piano was taken away, the hope of a child wanting his mother, the hope that he had fostered for just one moment, was taken away and he ran away heartbroken._

_Were the smiles, the hugs, the kisses, the treats all lies?_

_Was he… unloved? Did his father keep him just from obligation? In his memories, his father's warm smiles suddenly froze and rewinded, played and read in a whole different meaning. His sister's hugs and smiles changed to glares, frowns._

_That day, Gokudera took his pocket money, some clothes, some food and ran away._

_On that day of innocent gossip, a little boy's innocence was torn to shreds._

* * *

"_We don't need you here!"_

"_You're just a pampered brat, what do you know of real mafia?"_

"_Oh, he's that rich kid. Go away; you're not suited for this."_

"_You want to join our family?" Hard and mocking laughter rang in Gokudera's ears and empty stomach. "Are you crazy? We don't need a wimpy piano-player here!" Then he slammed the door on his face._

_He stared at the door of the bar, hearing their mocks even through the door, realising just how much he was unloved, unwanted in the world. And after so long, his father never even sent out any search teams for his disappearance. He had been hoping so hard… that maybe his father really did love him as a son._

_When the reality of the situation hit him, Gokudera stood up with resolution. No father was here to nuzzle him, no sister was here to hug him, no maid was here to give him food. He would need to get it himself._

_On that day, the last pieces of childhood, the last remnants of his happy smile, was taken away._

* * *

_Gokudera limped out, having successfully stolen the book that he wanted about rudimentary first aid. He walked away, collapsed into a nearly alleyway next to a drunk and read it feverishly, his hands shuddering from cold._

"_First, observe the part that is broken…" He read, and he cried in pain as he poked and prodded, trying to read through tears as he slowly reset his leg. Then he ripped his shirt to tie the splint, eyes still streaming tears. He lied there, panting, when the drunk beside him moved._

"_What are you doing, kid?" The man grunted, shifting to look at Gokudera with one eye._

_Gokudera didn't even flinch at the strong stench of booze. He made no answer, however, and ignored him, still cradling his leg to his chest._

"_You seem to be beat pretty badly." The drunk slurred, glancing at his badly set leg. Gokudera glared at him, but his eyes widened at his next words, words that he would remember forever._

"_Just remember the strong survive, kid." The drunk burped and took another swig from the bottle of alcohol in his hand. "Remember that, and you're set for life."_

_Gokudera suddenly remembered his previous lessons with Shamal._

_The next day, the base of a band of mafia exploded, and screams were heard over the flames. On the dead of night, only one child silhouette was seen leaving._

_As Gokudera left, tucking his stolen dynamite into their places, he felt a little tug of regret, but he brushed it off. Right then, a little bit of his humanity flew away._

* * *

_He didn't want to do this anymore. _

_Gazing up, he stared at the clouds that were pouring rain at him. He didn't want this._

_He belatedly remembered the warm castle, his father, a tray of cookies, and a shadowy figure of a grey haired woman. He smiled hollowly while sliding down the wall of a bar, next to the open back door. It was spilling light, laughter, warmth…_

"_Did you see Smoking Bomb?"_

"_He's mad. Absolutely mad. Too bad he's stronger than us."_

_Gokudera smiled bitterly. Strong? Too bad he was practically useless in rain. He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets, walking like any other slouched hooded teenager in the world._

_Was he mad?_

_Maybe._

_But he knew one thing, something certain. No-one wanted him. Everything that was to be taken away had been taken, unwillingly ripped and flung away somewhere he didn't know how to reach. He stared at the stormy sky, the never-ending clouds._

_Was this how loneliness felt like?_

* * *

_Gokudera stared at the boy, the boy that he had tried to kill… the boy who was risking his own life to save him. _

_When he had heard the Vongola Tenth was a wimpy kid who was useless at everything and one who didn't want, even refused the highly coveted position, he was enraged. Angry. _

_No, not angry. Jealous. _

_Here was a normal teenager who had grown up normally, with a mother and a father, given one of the most prestigious titles known to the underworld and he was daring to _refuse_ it? Every time Gokudera closed his eyes, he could see every rejection, hear every scathing remark, everything he endured just to be accepted in the mafia._

_And this useless guy, this boy was refusing it?_

'…_in this world the strong survive…'_

_He immediately took Reborn's offer to fly over and kill him, not having much of an ambition of getting the Vongola Tenth spot as to soothe his jealousy._

_But that jealousy was crushed by the wimpy guy in front of him in star print boxers._

_For the first time after losing his innocence, Hayato Gokudera felt happy. _

_Here was a person, a total stranger that accepted him, even after he threatened him and tried to murder him. There were no shouts, yells. Instead, he just smiled and saved him like it was nothing._

_And then and there, he felt warm._

_Next to this person, the person that now he realised was perfect for the Vongola Tenth, he felt he belonged. When his dynamite helped Juudaime out, he felt happy. Overjoyed._

_On that day, his passion for explosions came back._

* * *

_For Gokudera, being around Juudaime was enough. Before, it was Juudaime and only Juudaime. Then the baseball idiot creeped into Tsuna's life and therefore into his. And being dragged behind him was the always sleepy looking Brighteye._

_Jealousy rose in heart again. Tsuna was to be protected, and of course his protector was him! But then the baseball idiot laughed everything he threw at him off, and when he tried to yell at the Brighteye she would only blink lethargically and scowl._

_And little by little, he realised he could tolerate them. And, after awhile, even admitted he liked them. Only a little bit._

_Slowly, ever so slowly, Gokudera's heart was opening to his new family. Somehow, lunches sitting together was becoming a thing to be looked forward to, and it became common to see the baseball idiot holding his bat over his shoulder laughing then nudging Juudaime, which made Gokudera yell at him (what if Juudaime got hurt?), Tsuna try to calm them down and freaky eyes yawn at them and slowly move off._

_And slowly, ever so slowly, Gokudera got his life back. He had meaning again, and he treasured it with all his heart._

_He had a family again._

* * *

_He didn't realise when he started caring so much. He rescued a pair of kittens from a trash heap and kept them for awhile, before giving them to a centre for lost animals. Although he didn't want to leave them, he had to, simply because he couldn't afford it._

"_Eh, are you tired, Gokudera-kun?" Tsuna was looking at him, and his red eyes, in concern. He immediately blushed, partly in shame because he made him worried, the other in happiness because someone in the world actually cared._

"_No, Juudaime! I just studied late, that's all." _

_The Brighteye flicked a glance at him and smirked. "He left a pair of kittens at a lost animals centre. Maybe you couldn't sleep because you were worried about them?"_

_Gokudera scowled and tried to deny (because it wasn't true, dammit), when the baseball freak laughed and threw an arm over his shoulder._

"_You're actually quite a caring person, aren't you?" Gokudera blushed even harder, feeling like the other times that maybe this person didn't mean it, they were lying under a smile, they were trying to get him do to something…_

_But one look at the stupid baseball idiot's face and he knew he wasn't lying._

"_Eh, you're so kind, Gokudera-kun!"_

"_N-no, Juudaime, it isn't like that."_

"_Yeah, he is." The voice of freaky eyes came from the side, the start of this whole conversation. He shot her a glare before trying to get them to understand. He was a murderer, a cold-hearted bastard; the ones that were kind were them…_

_But on that day, he realised that he had changed. Maybe his beloved Juudaime had rubbed off on him, but, looking at the other's faces, maybe he could do something to atone for what he did._

_Maybe, he really wasn't that bad after all._

_On that day, from the help of his friends, Gokudera regained and took back his humanity, with the tiniest sliver of his lost childhood innocence._

* * *

_They were the only ones who accepted him for who he was. The ones that saved him, meaning to or not, and made him feel like he belonged. _

_He would give up his life for them. _

_They had given him a life to even give, anyway. Without them, he had no life. Being with them was his life. Now, every time he closed his eyes he saw warm smiles, friendly laughing and yelling. _

_Through them, he realised the past was the past. And the future was vast. And sometimes, why not just live the moment?_

_Gokudera looked at a family picnic; the stupid cow was nagging Kyoko and Haru, Aneki with goggles was teasing Reborn's mouth open while Juudaime was trying to calm down turf top and his Extremeness. Baseball freak was sitting next to a content looking freaky eyes, both of them muttering about which sandwich to choose, with freaky eyes absently braiding that gyoza ken girl's hair._

_He would protect them. He would never let this fall apart, be taken from him again. And with this, Gokudera smiled. A smile from the heart, a smile he thought he had lost forever._

_His family had gotten everything that had been taken away from him back again._

_And he would be damned if he ever let it go._

* * *

**And so, Alice tries to learn how to fight, only to get a nearly useless designated weapon, and a person who could teach her say no. Mukuro keeps implying something (but what?) and my take on Gokudera's past (Because really, I had to try expanding on him a little. And this story will be based on that past; tell me what you think?).**

**I hope you all enjoyed it. Gokudera had to get more screen time, after all, he's going to be a little more important later on. I intend to right a little extra past thing for each of the guardians. XD**

**An all new long chapter, and only one week and I updated! What's this shock? That is because it is the HOLIDAYS, everyone! *is on a high* **

**Please review. Please ****review and tell me how you view Gokudera's past bit and the chapter. ^^ Tell me if it's good or not, please! **

**Though, thank you for all of you people's awesomeness for reading this! This, sorry, is kind of filler and well, I know that people had been looking forward to Mukuro and Tsuna's fight. It's just that, well, describing the whole scene would be kind of... err... yeah. ^^" See you soon!**


	19. And she trains to become strong

**New chapter! My sister is away, so no beta-ing! I hope this works out, I did read over it a few more times than usual. Hope that makes up for it!**

**Thank you for reviews! We have hit over three hundred, and I near happy tears. Like seriously. No kidding. TT_TT THANK YOU!**

**Why another weekly update? Well, I'm used to writing a chapter a week, and since I'm stuck for my other one and my fingers won't stop flying for this one, I figured why not? We're getting up to the juicy plot twists after all.**

**Stopping my babbling, please enjoy this chapter.**

* * *

"No."

I froze, still staring at the floor. This wasn't the first time Grey refused me something, but the times he did were all for my own good. Like my over-eating of hash browns (he found my stash after his eighth try), forcing me to eat vegetables, looking over me as I did homework. In that way, Grey had always been more family than butler.

But didn't he understand my need to get stronger?

I looked up, staring at Grey who had turned back to his curry, with his face, for the first time I had ever seen, cold. "Please, Grey, teach me how to fight."

This was the second time I've ever felt this desperate for something; in my first life everything I wanted I had, and I wasn't really that demanding. In this life, I was freaking rich; I could get anything I wanted.

The first thing I had ever desperately wanted desperately was to go back to my family; the one in my first life. But since this was the pathway to that, I had to do this perfectly. Didn't Grey understand? I _had_ to get stronger!

Grey kept stirring his curry, his face relaxed from a cold one to one which was only determined. Determined to not teach me. "No means no, Miss."

"Please–"

Grey shook his head, cutting me off in the middle of my sentence. One look at his face and I knew not to continue. I left, after stealing a pair of chopsticks.

If I couldn't get Grey to teach me now, I'll just wear him down. And while I'm at it, why not try doing the trick that Jack told me to do? If I could master that, then I might not need Grey at all.

With that in mind, I started rummaging for a ping-pong ball. I knew we had one somewhere.

* * *

"Alice, what are you doing?"

I glanced up at Yamamoto, having a blank face on (since I was concentrating hard, I wasn't really thinking what face I should be putting up). He gave me a big smile, pointing to his face to indicate I should at least _try_ smiling. I twitched my mouth in his direction and focused back on what I was doing.

The small hollow plastic ball quivered at the end of the pair of chopsticks I held and I tried flinging it over my head, only for it to hit my forehead. I cursed, and picked it up. Yamamoto only watched me whack my head yet again with that _stupid_ ball and gave a confused grin.

"I'm trying to master a trick." I muttered a late reply, concentrating on balancing the ball on my chopsticks.

The most annoying thing was that holding the chopsticks wide wasn't enough; the gap had to be wide enough to hold the ball stably while small enough for me not to involuntarily make it fall when I was flinging it over my head. Oh and when flinging, I couldn't tip it to get more of a flicking motion or it would fall off.

It was utterly infuriating. I hadn't felt so infuriated at something for a long _long_ time.

"But you know we're in PE now, right...?" Yamamoto trailed off.

"Yes." I muttered distractedly again. Then I glanced up and looked at him for the first time since the start of our conversation. "Why are you here then?"

I had, after all, made sure to tuck myself into the most remote place on the field. Yamamoto laughed.

"Gokudera's yelling at everyone so that Tsuna could kick the ball into the goal without anyone interfering, and the teacher interrupted and well, they had an argument and well..." He awkwardly laughed and scratched his head, "the game had temporarily stopped."

"Oh." I nodded in understanding and focused on the innocent looking ping-pong ball again. "No wonder."

"Haha, yeah! Gokudera always does that, but this time he was on the opposite team! No one really wanted to talk back at Gokudera though, and when I tried..."

I tuned out Yamamoto and concentrated on the ball. Okay, slowly then... flick!

A gust of wind blew right then, and it blew the ball to the right, changing my intended trajectory. I cursed, but caught it before it flew too far away.

This was harder than I thought it would be, and I had already thought it was practically impossible!

I shoved hair off my face, and I thought I saw a black car outside the school gates. But when I looked again, it was gone. I shrugged and narrowed my eyes at the ball once again.

How to balance it while a wind was blowing...?

* * *

"Alice..." Tsuna trailed off awkwardly, "do you need help?"

I looked at him and grinned. "No, I'm fine."

"But you're, um, spilling everywhere."

And looking at Tsuna's desk, I saw that it was indeed, true. I sighed and started wiping it up. "Sorry," I muttered, glaring at my chopsticks. Tsuna retreated with a little 'hiie!', and at that Gokudera exploded.

"What are you doing, freaky eyes! How dare you frighten Juudaime and spill your food over his desk!"

"Now, now, Gokudera, calm down a little! This is the first time we've seen Alice eat using chopsticks after all!"

I looked at Yamamoto, surprised. He noticed?

Well, I thought as I looked at the mess I made of Tsuna's table, it was pretty hard not to notice. There was rice littered everywhere on my side, to the relative cleanliness of the others.

"Now that you mention it..." Tsuna looked at me with his wide innocent brown eyes. "You always used forks and spoons when you were eating lunch. Why are you using chopsticks now?"

I felt my ears going red (how could I lie to Tsuna with him looking like that?). I couldn't really say I wanted to protect him now, could I? I was pretty sure Gokudera would explode at that, but I knew deep down Tsuna had a hero complex; he wouldn't want anyone (except Reborn) to protect him.

"Err... I wanted to experience Japanese culture?"

That was a lame excuse even to my ears. I felt Gokudera raising an eyebrow, but before he could spout any sarcastic remarks, Yamamoto jumped in. "That's awesome, Alice! You want to visit the sushi shop afterwards? Come!"

I looked at Yamamoto hopelessly, before sighing and agreed.

I had yet to find a way to persuade Grey, after all.

* * *

"Ah, aren't you Takeshi's friend! Come in, come in!"

I grinned at Yamamoto's dad. "Yeah, I wanted to experience Japanese culture, and he said to come here. He couldn't come with me though, because he had baseball practice."

Yamamoto's dad chuckled and shook his head.

"Yamamoto's always advertising our little shop." He looked around fondly. "We're quite popular with the locals, but now not many people come to this place anymore now that they built that new shopping mall…" He trailed off smiling fondly, giving his shop a fleeting look

He had financial difficulties? I frowned, looking around. It did look a bit worse for wear... He flashed a smile at me, "But you're not here to listen to an old man's difficulties. What do you want?"

"The best." I said without hesitation, sliding into a seat and looking at him in expectation. He faltered.

"But that would be expensive!"

"Don't worry." I waved off his worries. "I would like to watch you make them though, is that okay?"

Yamamoto's dad, though he did have some worried frown lines, complied by laughing. "Of course! True Japanese sushi is made on the spot!" He then pulled out a huge fish, and I watched mesmerised as he explained what he doing to me.

By watching his movements, I knew that he was truly a master with the blade; you could see it in his movements. It was the first time, even after watching Jack, that I truly understood the meaning 'a weapon is the extension of the body'.

"You use the knife beautifully." I blurted out, without really thinking. He glanced at me, surprised, but even with that falter his smooth slicing of the fish never paused. Then he smiled a really warm smile at me, a smile so strong that I wondered if all the previous smiles were fakes.

"Thank you."

Did his movements become quicker?

It was in no time at all that I was sitting in the little dim store, a little fresh breeze blowing through the open door and a plate of sushi in front of me. My eyes widened at the amount.

"So much." I murmured while reaching out for the soy sauce. Yamamoto's dad heard and grinned over his shoulder.

"The best right?"

I wasn't a good judge of sushi, but even I could see that the sushi was top class. I snapped the supplied bamboo chopsticks apart and tried to pick up a salmon sushi. It fell apart, and my face fell. Yamamoto's dad (just like Yamamoto), didn't comment but leaned over the counter.

"You're a foreigner, aren't you?"

I stared at him. It was pretty obvious by my face shape and eyes, right? I looked, totally and utterly, a normal _western_ teenager. Like Gokudera, only much less manly. Maybe a comparison to Bianchi? Nah, she was way too pretty.

"Yes."

"I'll teach you how to use chopsticks, if you like."

"Really?"

He winked at me. "As thanks for your compliment earlier."

And so after I finished devouring the sushi with my hands came a twenty minute lesson on how to use chopsticks. I got it, after awhile. The basic concept, at least.

"To tell the truth, I have to clear a challenge from a friend." I said, while trying to pick up some fresh sushi that Yamamoto's dad had made for me. He raised his eyebrows.

"Oh? What is it?"

I gave up on my attempt (I still couldn't hold anything with my chopsticks yet), and swivelled around to look at him. "Well, I have to do something, something important."

In the dimming light, Yamamoto's dad looked rather... fatherly. And from the series, I knew he wouldn't ask many questions. The wrinkles in his face made his face look craggier than usually in the shadows, but somehow made him more kind. I swivelled around again, staring at my chopsticks and decided to talk.

"It's something to do with chopsticks," I continued while holding up the chopsticks I had been practicing with, "and well I have to do a trick with them before he would agree to teach me. It's hard, for me, and so the person I was asking to teach me told me maybe I could do some secondary learning while I mastered this." I paused a little, staring at the red and gold reflecting from the oil at the end of the chopsticks. Yamamoto's dad had been sitting still, listening carefully and waiting for me to continue.

"I tried to ask that person, but he refused to teach me. So I decided to continue trying to master this trick while thinking of a way to persuade him." I sighed, putting the chopsticks down on the worn table gently. "It's not working. Both sides aren't working."

Yamamoto's dad moved.

"What's the trick you want to learn?"

I buried my head into my arms. "Well," I said through my sleeves, "I'm supposed to balance a ping-pong ball at the end of my chopsticks, then flick it over my head and catch it on the other side perfectly. After that, I have to repeat that twenty times without dropping it once."

"That's a pretty hard technique." Yamamoto's dad muttered. "And you say you don't even know how to use chopsticks?"

"Yeah." I muttered miserably into the table.

"Hmm, to do that you don't even need to learn how to use chopsticks, but it would be best if you could."

I tilted my head so that I had one eye looking at him. "How do you know?"

"My master once asked me to do a similar thing with a… big knife and a pebble."

I sat up. "Really? Can you teach me?"

He laughed, and ate a sushi himself. "It wouldn't be fair then, would it? But I could give you a hint, I guess."

"What?" I asked, desperate for any advice at all.

"It's all about timing!" He said with a bright smile. I immediately drooped back into my sleeves.

"That's it?" I mumbled, through my arms.

He tutted me with a smile. "Young people, always rushing."

I sighed, but stood up with a smile.

"Thank you." I looked at the prices that the sushi I ate and calculated it all in my brain. Then I flashed a card that would access my bank directly, swiped it and put in the pin before Yamamoto's dad could even protest.

"I was going to say it was on the house." Yamamoto's dad said while smiling in a slightly bewildered fashion. Kind of like Yamamoto when he was surprised.

"I know."

He grinned at me, and I left (after saying a goodbye, of course).

It was all about timing, huh?

Reaching my apartment the usual way (you know, car park-elevator-random floor-elevator-apartment), I debated on ways to get Grey to teach me. The elevator doors opened, and Grey was there, arranging something on a dish. He smiled at me, opening his mouth…

I bowed before he could talk. "Grey, please–"

"No. Would you like a prawn, miss?"

* * *

Timing.

I breathed in and out, and concentrated. Holding the chopsticks in front of me, I placed the small ball on top of them.

Timing. After a week of thought and another of practice I finally got it up to five times. As Yamamoto's dad said, I needed timing. A steady hand, time it so that you're absolutely ready, the flick must be strong but quick, bend the knees a little just in case it wouldn't clear my head while whirling around, then catching it (hopefully).

I practiced at home, at school, going to school, in the car, and I nearly got the essential timing done. And I think Grey was pretty annoyed with me too, with what every time I would go and ask him to teach me how to fight.

But oh well.

_Timing_, I thought to myself as I whirled around for the umpteenth time. I caught it, and smiled to myself. That makes seven. A new record! I breathed steadily, getting into the flow. Flick it into the air, bend knees, whirl, look to where the ball will land, let the chopsticks catch it…

The ball quivered on the edge of my chopstick, and I desperately tried to flick it into the air again to save myself from needing to do it all _again_… Failure.

I sighed, before picking it up and putting the ping-pong ball back on the end of my chopsticks. I held them so that the ball rolled towards me a little before preparing to flick…

A knock on the door, and I looked over at Grey holding a cup of hot chocolate. "I thought you would need a drink, Miss."

"Thanks Grey. About that…"

"No means no, Miss."

"Okay…" I sighed before preparing to flick. I calmed my breathing, and opened my eyes. Flick, bend knees, whirl, and see where the ball will land…

Grey silently left.

* * *

"What do you think you're doing, Bright?"

I looked up from concentrating on bouncing the ping-pong ball on my chopsticks. I was up to about thirty, and I was annoyed at the teacher for breaking my concentration. Though my next goal was to bounce the ping-pong ball without concentrating (too much), I wasn't up to that stage yet!

"Doing this." I said with my usual scowl gracing my face. The teacher, with a vein throbbing in his temple, called on me to do a question on the board that he just wrote down. I sighed, but answered it anyway. He looked surprised that I got it right (once again). I thought he would have been used to it by now…

So I resumed what I was doing.

_Thock, thock, thock, thock, thock…_

The sounds of the ping-pong ball landing on my chopsticks echoed around the room. My first warning sign was Gokudera's ears twitching. The next was him putting his legs to the floor. The third was him standing up…

Oops, too late.

"Would you _stop that_, freaky eyes? I can't sleep!"

I looked at him slowly, letting my eyes slide to him from the ping-pong ball slowly. The ball continued bouncing, and I could feel where the ball would go through the chopstick… Maybe I really could bounce it without looking at it after all…

Me ignoring him just served to ignite his annoyance even more.

"That's _it!_ Juudaime, please duck this!"

He reached into his shirt, and lo and behold, between his fingers were sticks of dynamite. Tsuna, who had looked half-asleep from the teacher's boring lesson, immediately shot up and rushed to Gokudera.

"Hiie!" He nearly fell out of his chair in his haste to get to him. "No, Gokudera! Don't throw your dynamite in here!"

"Now, now, Gokudera!" Yamamoto tried, walking over to clap a hand on his shoulder, "Alice didn't mean it! Calm down!"

"What, you baseball freak–"

"Calm down, Gokudera!" Tsuna tried again.

"If Juudaime says so…" He put down his dynamite slowly and sat down. Tsuna sighed in relief, and Yamamoto laughed, before going back to his seat again. In the sudden silence, the sounds of my ping-pong ball hitting my chopsticks once again echoed around the room (since, well, I never actually stopped).

_Thock, thock, thock, thock…_

"That's it!" Gokudera yelled. He stood up again, and started throwing dynamite towards me. And just as quickly, I stopped bouncing my ping-pong ball and used my chopsticks to throw them out the window.

My chopsticks weren't fast enough though, and after three I gave up and used my hands instead. Soon enough, the outside was full of explosions and the class was staring at the two of us (Gokudera throwing dynamite at me and me throwing it out the window) in a mixture of awe and fear.

"You two! Detention!" The teacher screamed nearly soundlessly over the noise.

Not that we cared. The principal had made it clear, after us two having consistent hundreds in everything we did that we were 'valuable assets to the school'.

After a few minutes, Gokudera paused, panting, so I sat down and took out my ping-pong ball from my pocket again. Tsuna's eyes widened at it and nearly fainted.

"Hiie! Alice, please don't!"

Looking at him, I sighed and complied.

And I had been pretty proud of my progress as well… The teacher adjusted his glasses, ready to give us a lecture while the class sighed in relief.

The door suddenly opened, and everyone froze in fear again.

"Who were the ones making that noise? I'll bite them to death."

* * *

I was cleaning up the computer room (this was the only room Grey wasn't allowed to touch), when my hand bumped into the journal that I-pin gave me on that day when Lambo sent me to the future.

My hand twitched. Should I read it? Maybe it would hold clues, helpful hints…

I shook my head. No, not now. Maybe later when I was truly desperate. Knowing my thoughts before even experiencing them would be kind of scary, anyway. I continued cleaning, and finally finished. Plopping on my chair, I swivelled around thinking of what I should do next.

Oh yeah, I wanted to thank Yamamoto's dad for the advice he gave…

Going to the computer, I went to my personal funds. Looking it over, I found it was sufficient to support ten sushi places like Yamamoto's dads for about thirty years.

Grinning, I went to the part where the computer had a heading that said 'personal projects'. There, under 'sponsor', I put Yamamoto's shop. Then I wrote a letter (I was pretty proud of myself), detailing things like the little tiny quirks of the financial support.

Yamamoto's dad was pretty proud; I had to word it carefully. And hope it didn't sound suspicious.

Sending it, I felt proud. I hadn't been doing much, productive wise, after all. This made me feel helpful.

Which left me to the second thing that I just had to find out…

I went to the network, and searched up Grey. Though I felt a bit guilty, I _had_ to know why he kept refusing me.

Clicking on his name, I mentally chuckled at a picture of Grey much _much _younger than he was now. Then I read the article. My eyes widened at Grey's past. Some parts were strangely marked confidential and I couldn't get in, even though I tried every single password I remembered. So I made do with what I could read. And from those pieces of information, I pieced together a story that I would never have guessed from my grandfatherly butler.

I closed my eyes after reading it and stood up, closing the window and sleeping the computer.

I'll ask one more time.

And if this time, Grey continued to say no, I'll give up.

I couldn't just keep asking him to teach me with a past like that now, could I?

* * *

"Grey…" I approached him. He smiled at me, looking totally homey with a pink ducky apron on, a kerchief on his head and a feather duster in his hand. Looking at him, I wouldn't have expected…

"Yes, Miss?"

"Are you sure you can't teach me?"

Grey shook his head in a no. I nodded and left with a grin. "Can I have hash browns tonight?"

He looked at me, a little bewildered, before wrinkling his eyes in understanding. "You read my past, didn't you?"

I froze, before turning around and bowing. "I'm sorry! I was just curious, I didn't want to know about _that_, please believe me!" He sighed, and continued to do what he had been doing before; dusting. I sneezed a little, standing up straight again. "You don't mind?"

"No, a past like that will never be forgotten, after all." He smiled at me. "Are you giving up on me teaching you, Miss?"

Nodding hesitantly, I sat down. "Yup, I can't ask you after knowing about _that_."

Grey looked at me speculatively, before setting his duster aside.

"Thank you. And I will tell you something."

"Hmm?" I asked, looking from the window I had been staring at.

"I have thought about it, and after observing you working so hard on your chopstick training," he nodded at the chopsticks in my hand, "I will give you a chance…"

I held my breath. Was he saying what I _think_ he was saying?

"…to let me teach you." He looked sternly at my surprised face. "But since you already know of my past, don't let it repeat again, you hear me?"

"Yes!"

"When do you want to start training?"

"Now."

Grey nodded, untying the kerchief from his head.

"Very well."

* * *

"Guns are heavier than they seem," Grey was teaching me, "so holding them for extended amounts of time needs good arm strength." He prodded my arms. "Your arms are sadly weak. Did you specialise in running with Jack-sama?"

"Yes. He said that was because my talent leaned towards speed."

"Speed…" He put a hand to his chin and prodded my build yet again. "Yes, you have the body structure for speed. Speed is a good thing for a gunner, but strength comes to play nearly everywhere so it is just as important." Grey frowned at me, "I expect you increasing your basic strength with light exercises for now."

"Yes!"

"Let's see how strong you are."

We headed towards the gym provided by the hotel. After Grey collected the results, even I stared at them in disbelief.

They were pathetic. Grey sighed, and muttered to himself (a mutter I barely heard). "_We have a long way to go…"_

I sighed. Oh well.

* * *

"Don't stiffen your arm! Let your arm go with the recoil while controlling it so that you can shoot precisely for the next shot!"

"Yes!"

I tried with muscles all around my body shrieking in pain. Grey was nearly as Spartan as the others, I swear. But he was a strange mixture of number one and number three. He was furiously physical Spartan '_I expect you to be able to lift fifteen kilograms next time!_', while still giving encouragements like my un-Spartan Spartan teacher.

And even while he was devising a training program for me, he still had time to clean, make me drinks, organise the laundry, and sometimes even _cook_ while I kept training alternatively with guns and chopsticks with no time to spare.

He truly was Super-Grey.

I narrowed my eyes at the target, in a room we had especially booked and arranged. I had cleared the single shot target, at least. It was when I had to do consecutive shots that I failed miserably.

"No, relax your arm more! Let it absorb the shock! Don't let it stiffen up like it wants to!"

"Yes!"

* * *

_Thock, thock, thock, thock…_

I was sitting on the rooftop at lunch, munching on a sandwich while training my left hand to know how to bounce a ping-pong ball. It was learning, albeit more slowly than my right. At least I could multi-task now.

The problem was, I reflected, with the trick of catching the ball over my head that halfway to twenty I would start to get dizzy. And that made my vision all funny, which led to me failing at about sixteen or seventeen all the time.

_Thock, thock, thock, thock…_

"Hn." A click of the door opening, and I froze. The ping-pong ball, to my fleet satisfaction, landed perfectly on my chopsticks.

"Err, Hibari!" I laughed awkwardly, pulling a Yamamoto and scratching the back of my head sheepishly. "I was just sitting here, I'll leave now…"

I was in the middle of shoving the chopsticks into my lunchbox when there was another sniff from behind me. "I never said you were crowding."

It was half a minute later when I unfroze and registered that _Hibari_ the _don't-come-near-me_ guy just told me I wasn't crowding. He had left to the other side of the roof by then, and I settled robotically back into my spot and furiously thought of a reason why he would say to me, an annoying _human being_ wouldn't be crowding him. I would understand if I was a hedgehog, or a bird, or a freaking squirrel…

Thinking of birds, Hibird had flown over to me and started spouting the Nami-chu school song in my ear. I fed it a bit of rice. Oh yeah, I had helped bind his arm back then, right? Maybe he feels he hasn't paid back his debt yet or something…

I nodded to myself.

That was probably it.

I laughed a bit as Hibird tugged on my hair with its beak. I gently extracted it, and fed it a little more rice instead. Then I pulled out my chopsticks again, fully intending to go back to my training before Hibird landed on them. And no matter how much I tried to gently shake him off, he wouldn't let go.

Sighing, I held it up high, because it seemed as if Hibird liked it that way. It was in the middle of this that Hibird flew back to Hibari again, and I followed it with my eyes to see… Hibari looking at me?

Shrugging, I dismissed it as a trick of the light. He was probably looking at Hibird.

Its cuteness nearly demanded as much attention as a kicked puppy did, anyway.

* * *

"No, your aim is always slightly to the left! Try to shift what you think as centre a little to the right!"

"Yes!"

I squinted my eyes, but all my shots were still on the left side of the target. Grey sighed, before holding up a blindfold. He then tied it up so that it covered my left eye.

"This is only temporary. Now try shooting." I did, and was surprised it yielded somewhat better results. "As I thought," Grey muttered to himself, looking strangely satisfied. Then he took it off.

"Huh?"

"We will be trying to improve your aim from a two metre range and moving out."

I looked at him with confused eyes. Of course I would get bullseye if I was shooting from two metres, but if Grey said so there must be a reason…

"Good." He nodded at how my bullets were straight in the middle of the bullseye. "Move out half a metre and see if you still get bullseye."

"Yes!"

* * *

"Nineteen…" I muttered to myself. I calmed down my heartbeat, and I prepared myself for my last spin. Flick, bend knees, whirl, and catch the ball…

I stared at the ball on my chopsticks in astonishment. I caught it.

I caught it!

Laughing, I burst out of the room, haven't felt so elated for… years. "Grey, I did it!"

Grey looked up from his spot on the couch. "You've finished the exercise Jack-sama told you to do?"

"Yup!" I grinned proudly. Grey nodded, smiling in his oh-so-grandfatherly way and held up a bulky package.

"Jack-sama thought it was about time too, and sent you these."

I took it, thanking him before going back into my room again. I opened the package carefully (who knew what he put in there?) before peering in to see a bunch of cards and four pairs of long, slender metal chopsticks.

There was a note from Jack on top. I took it and read it.

_Well, Alice, I thought it was about time that you got the hang of that trick (well, and if you haven't I overestimated you)._

_Since I don't know how to fight with chopsticks either, I commissioned some chopsticks just for you! You'll notice they're longer than usual, and metal. They're specially made, so they won't lose to any buff muscular guy holding clubs, baby! Don't worry, I tried! Aren't they awesome?_

_There was a Brighteye once that fought with chopsticks too, so I sent over her notes on how to use them. As well as a handbook on hairstyles containing chopsticks. I mean, you have to hide your chopsticks some way, right? You're lucky in that aspect; kitchen knives are so hard to hide! It's a nightmare to get past airport customs with them, so I won't be going to you, sorry!_

_Anyway, get used to these chopsticks; they're probably going to be your weapons for the rest of your life here. Get to know them so well that they're like extra fingers! Or arms, or legs, or toe-nails whichever you prefer. Don't let them out of your sight ever again!_

_Ciao, Jack._

And at the end, he drew a smiley face with a cartoon thumbs up.

I took out the chopsticks, looking at them in the artificial light. They really were well-made…

Holding them for a bit, I felt the difference immediately. They were, most probably, solid and they were heavier. I put them aside for the moment however, and picked up the book with the ways to style your hair with chopsticks. It was surprisingly thick.

Looking through the contents, there were about three dozen and a half ways to style really long hair, about the same with long hair, half that amount for shoulder length hair, and five or six for short haired people.

Now I was glad that I hadn't bothered to cut my hair for the past half year. It was about the length of my shoulder blades now. Picking some of my hair up, I tried some of the easy hairstyles that the book recommended for beginners… and failed.

I put that aside with a sheepish chuckle and looked at some old notes. It was really interesting to read through them, there were ways to use them that I would never had thought to, and I think with experience I may think of even more ways to use them.

And when that day comes, I'll just add notes for the next person that came by and got chopsticks as a weapon.

But since, guessing, that wouldn't happen for awhile yet; why not master these first?

There was an unfamiliar feeling rising through me as I looked through these notes. I smiled up, feeling somewhat strange, because I couldn't stop smiling.

Was this what they call excitement? Smiling, flicking through notes, training, laughing with friends, laughing at friends…

For the first time, the first time in both lives, I felt truly alive.

* * *

"Eh, isn't that Kyoko-chan? Oh, she's sitting with Sawada-san!" Miwa said happily as we were window shopping. Setsuna was browsing through some clothes in a previous store a bit too long, so we decided to continue without her.

Sure enough, there was Tsuna and Kyoko was sitting in front of a shop. I raised an eyebrow.

Wasn't today review day? I thought Tsuna had to go… Although it was Sunday, Japan schooling was pretty strict. Maybe he skipped.

No, not maybe. He did skip. He was right there, wasn't he? I shook my head and sighed. Miwa browsed through some clothes outside a random shop. "Does this look nice, Alice-chan?"

I looked at it. It looked like any other pink t-shirt in the world.

"It's nice?"

Miwa pouted playfully at me. "You should never use 'nice' when complimenting clothes, Alice-chan!"

"Sorry." I grinned sheepishly. Miwa smiled and leaned forward.

"Eh, Alice-chan! You're smiling a lot more these days!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, and you talk a lot more too. You're finally opening up to people!"

"Huh." I replied, thinking over what she said. Did I really become more talkative in the one year or so into middle school?

"Yeah– What's that?" Miwa's eyes widened as she pointed to something behind me. I heard a huge crashing noise accompanied with some screams as I turned around and saw something smoking on the rooftop entrance of the shopping mall.

Suddenly, this scene flashed in my mind. Tsuna and co. all skipped review day, called everyone here, had fun, Kyoko and Tsuna talking about something romantic, explosion, _Squalo…_

Figures the day that I decided to go out (with my normal friends that I had neglected for so long), Squalo would come barging in, making the whole place all dusty and frightening all the normal shoppers away.

"Alice-chan, let's go!" Miwa tugged on my sleeve, talking louder to be heard over the crashes. "It's not good to hang around when these things come!"

"Miwa. Go over there with Setsuna. I'll be fine." I grinned reassuringly at her worried look. "Trust me? Go first. Please. I'll be fine, I have something to do."

"You can do it later, come on Alice-chan!" Miwa said, grabbing my sleeve and preparing to leave. I gently extracted her hand from my arm.

"No, that something needs to be done now. Sorry, Miwa. Just trust me, okay?"

Miwa looked at me, and although she looked confused her eyes flashed understanding. Understand what I don't know, but it was enough for her to let go of my sleeve. "Okay…" She frowned at me, before running away to join my only permanently bespectacled friend. I watched as she whispered something to her, and Setsuna made a move to come to me before Miwa shook her head.

Heh. I always knew befriending Miwa was a good thing. They left, while shooting glances at me, and I was just glad I got to hang out normally for most of the day with them.

And with that, I headed towards Tsuna and the others, ready for the plot to start again.

I was determined this time; I will not act the damsel in distress. I will be a person who watches from the background, preventing change from happening, the future from going awry.

This time, I will protect Tsuna.

* * *

**Alice Extra – future**

_It was dark, and I was squinting as I tried to look at what the heck the others had been preparing for the past few days. I bet they didn't think I notice their whispers and secretive glances; of course I did. It was practically my job to do so._

"_Come on, Alice!" Yamamoto's cheery voice came from the right. I turned, and saw a dark doorway blurrily. I rubbed my eyes trying to clear the blur, stumbling forward._

"_Huh? Yamamoto, you call me out in the unholy hours in the morning and you make me go…"_

_I stepped through the doorway complaining, and suddenly the lights switched on, and streamers popped out of their containers as happy faces from everywhere shouted the same thing at exactly the same time._

"_Happy birthday, Alice!"_

_Staring around, I found they were actually really prepared. I blinked at the bright decorations for a bit before grinning._

"_Eh, I nearly forgot! Thank you!" _

"_We knew you would forget, Alice-chan!" Haru dragged Kyoko over to me. "So that's why Kyoko and I put this idea forward, and the others seemed really taken to it as well. After all, we need some fun once in awhile, right?"_

"_Mhmm! Alice-chan, please enjoy these few hours!"_

_I grinned, and patted their shoulders. "Thanks Kyoko, Haru. That was really sweet of you two."_

"_Cake! I want to eat the cake already!" Lambo whined from the corner. Seriously, you would have thought he was growing up until you put him in front of cake. Then he turned back into a five-year old brat again._

"_Lambo! Today's Alice's birthday! Don't be like…"_

"_Eh, it's okay Tsuna. That cake looks really nice, doesn't it, Lambo?" He nodded eagerly, and I could see he was practically drooling. "Okay then, let's eat cake!"_

_Lambo cheered and jumped on me. "Alice-nee is the best!"_

"_Oi, Lambo! You're getting a little heavy for this!" I grunted, staggering a little. _

"_Stupid cow, get off her! Can't you see you're too heavy?"_

_I sighed as they started yelling over my head, until I-pin popped up from somewhere holding a knife, handle up. "Here, Alice-nee! For cutting the cake!"_

"_Thanks, I-pin!" _

_I-pin blushed; her hair had already grown out enough so that she could hold two braids. He ears were becoming visible too, amazingly. She was becoming remarkably pretty (something I think Lambo noted as he teased her about it a lot)._

"_You're becoming taller too!" I added, smiling at her as I tried to manoeuvre Lambo off my back (he was stubborn in not letting go). She grinned happily at me, but our moment was ruined by Ryohei._

"_Let's eat cake to the EXTREME!" Hana, who had just entered holding drinks, put down the tray and whacked his head._

_We all laughed then, and I headed towards the cake._

"_So how old do I turn today?" I asked, smiling at the camera that Hana brandished from somewhere (she was just amazing like that). _

"_Eighteen!" she said happily, snapping pictures. She had turned to photography for more than a hobby. I faltered._

"_Eighteen?"_

"_Huh, is there a problem?"_

_I smiled and shook my head. "Nope! I was just shocked. How can time fly so fast? I remember when I was a thirteen year old being flattened by Tsuna…" I teased the brunette at my side, who blushed._

"_I didn't mean to, I was…"_

"_We know, we know." I said, nudging him. I finished slicing the cake, listening to the happy voices of my friends. "All done!"_

"_Cake!" Lambo launched himself at an extra large piece. I caught him before he face-planted into said cake piece._

"_Be more careful, Lambo!"_

"_Yes, Alice-nee." He looked properly contrite for a second or two before bursting out again. "Can I eat the cake now?"_

"_Yes."_

_And he dived enthusiastically into the extra large piece._

_We all laughed (which Lambo made faces at, which made us laugh harder). _

_After twenty minutes or so, it was present giving time. Hana, Kyoko and Haru had pooled together to buy the new television that I had dearly wanted, Ryohei gave me an obviously treasured signature from a famous boxer, Fuuta, I-pin and Lambo had also joined together to make me some burnt cookies (which I took happily). _

_Chrome couldn't come, but apparently she sent her present ahead of time (she sent a journal, strangely). Bianchi gave me a bouquet of purple looking flowers, Yamamoto a grin and a new pair of shoes. Gokudera gave me some weird cat/alien/robot charm, and Reborn flatly told me that he had arranged the decorations, so he didn't have to get a present._

_Tsuna blushed, fidgeted, before giving me a small box. "Happy birthday," he muttered before rushing to the back of the room. I grinned, raising an eyebrow (I couldn't stop my smile today), before looking around._

"_Where's Hibari?"_

_That sparked some conversation. "We told him to be here…"_

"_He won't come to a party even for _Alice?_"_

"_Ah, he's like that…"_

_The mutters stopped however, when a grim-faced Hibari opened the door. "I'm sorry I'm late."_

_I smiled at him when he walked over. Stroking Hibird, who had flown to me while chirping happily, I looked up at him._

"_Why are all of you so tall nowadays? I'm going to get a crick in the neck soon…" _

_Hibari merely did an elegant snort (because even snorts on Hibari seem elegant) and produced a little box from his sleeve._

"_Happy birthday."_

_Taking it, I held both Tsuna's and Hibari's together. _

"_Thank you!"_

_We continued like that awhile (though Hibari retreated nearly as fast as he came; I was just happy he beared crowds just to give me my present), until Gokudera looked at his watch. He grimaced, but he walked towards Tsuna anyway._

"_Juudaime, I know I shouldn't but…"_

_Tsuna's face fell._

"_Is it time already?"_

_The party quieted down, and Kyoko, Haru and Hana's faces fell into worry. "Already?"_

_Tsuna nodded grimly. "It was a pity that Alice's birthday fell on such an important mission date. I'm sorry…"_

_I shook my head. "It's okay. I'm just glad you all celebrated it." Tsuna smiled at me and we left the room. "Don't pack up yet, okay? We might come back, and we'll finish the party!"_

"_What do you mean, might?" Hana forced a smile. "Of course you all will come back."_

_Nodding, I replied. "Of course."_

_Only it was my eighteenth birthday. My eighteenth huh… I walked towards my room, and entered it, picking up my extra chopsticks and checking the guns on my hips were still there._

_And I had been wondering why some things looked blurry…_

"_Are you ready, Alice?" Yamamoto asked from the doorway, a somewhat more forced smile on his face than the one that he held at the party. Yes, in these grim times, we had to make our own happy moments after all. I wouldn't ruin happy times for them. _

_I smiled back up, the flawless smiling face perfected during the years._

_Was I ready?_

"_Of course."_

* * *

**From popular demand, people seemed to want another future scene; so I gave one! This is much happier than other extras I've posted (and wrote). It ends on an ominous note though. I couldn't help myself. XD**

**I was surprised that many people didn't expect something more from Grey (though I felt weird typing Grey not grandfatherly), as I did a **_**tiny**_** foreshadowing with the chapter where Alice asked Grey to drive the birds away from their helicopters when they were saving Tsuna and co. and he used guns, remember? I wonder if anyone did get that tiny little foreshadowing though!**

**Filler again, but important filler! Important filler that lasts for 6000 words and over. ==" **

**At least the Varia arc is starting, hey? And I personally like this chapter, because it helps to relate Alice to strengthening and growing. Hehe…**

**Review please! And tell me how you see this! Or just plain encouragement, or maybe even tell me some things that you don't like, or want to add, or suggestions (because, as said before, I'm greedy. ^^").**


	20. To inherit the mistakes of the past

**Really, thank you for the reviews. They give me ideas, motivate, and lets me know that people appreciate the story. **

**Thank you. ^^**

**Second thing is this; as most of you have noticed, this is in Alice's point of view. Therefore, I can't well write other people's thoughts. Please use your imagination and fill in the blanks! It IS more fun that way, after all. You can practice this with Squalo in the following scene.**

**Please enjoy. This is super long. O_O**

* * *

"Reborn." I said to the only silhouette I could recognise in the dust. He was the one with the fedora-shaped head. The Reborn silhouette turned around.

"Alice. I'm going to go back home to get Tsuna's gloves. Make sure Dino gets here in time."

"Okay."

But even before I finished what I was saying, Reborn literally disappeared from my sight, moving too fast to be seen. I slipped on my sunglasses to decrease the risks of Squalo seeing me and took out my phone. I then hit the track button to Dino's phone number; his phone was a satellite one, it should be easy to see where he was.

Waiting a few impatient seconds for the phone to register where Dino was, the map finally popped up and I escaped, running towards the street where his mobile showed up on my screen. It was close, thank goodness. The explosions didn't get any softer as I ran, but the dust cleared enough for me to see clearly. Rubbing dust off my phone screen, I followed the instructions flashing on it.

Running through a few alleys in the shortest way to get to Dino, I jumped over some rubbish bags and burst out of an alleyway just in time to see a bunch of men in black suits turning a corner in a way that would take much longer. Much too long.

"Dino! Wait!"

Dino turned around with a surprised face. "Alice! What, I'm busy…"

"I'm here to take you to Tsuna through a shortcut."

His eyes sharpened, and he immediately turned around and started running towards me. I was gratified by his instant trust in me but didn't continue thinking much on it. There were other things to do. I nodded at him and dove back into the alleyway I came from.

I made sure to run a bit slower than my usual speed, knowing Dino and his subordinates might not be able to follow me otherwise. We escaped the constricting alleyways into a wider, dust filled street.

To the right was an adjoining street, and there was Squalo with his back to us standing tall over two small silhouettes. Dino immediately took in the situation, nodded at me in thanks and stood forward. His subordinates immediately followed, and I trailed behind.

"Superbi Squalo," Dino said his voice full of confidence, "you haven't changed a bit."

Tsuna, who had been shaking in his boxers, opened his eyes in disbelief at the familiar voice and looked up. Squalo had a similar reaction, whirling around to look at Dino.

I looked at Reborn; he nodded at me. I nodded grimly back and looked at the exchange in front of me.

"Being so serious against children," Dino continued while holding out his whip, "aren't you embarrassed?"

"Dino-san!" Tsuna stuttered out, eyes as wide as they could go. And maybe his hyper intuition was acting up, because his eyes slid to the side towards me. "Alice!"

Squalo and Dino continued a stare-off, neither letting their gazes go until Squalo glanced towards Tsuna. Then me. His eyes never stopped glaring, though his eyes lingered on me and Dino more than necessary.

"If you insist on continuing your tasteless little game, I'll take you on." Dino said, looking at him squarely.

You could see Squalo was deliberating, as he kept an eye on both Dino and Tsuna. He evidently came to a conclusion however, and he turned towards Dino. "VOI! It'd be fun to take you on right now Bucking Bronco, but the boss won't like it if I take on the Family Alliance." He looked towards the floor, but this time his eye on me. "So I'll go home quietly…"

Squalo waited for a moment for Dino's family to relax.

I continued looking at him, wary of why he was keeping an eye on me. "As if I'll do that!" Squalo suddenly yelled, grasping Tsuna by the head and lifting him up into the air. Tsuna immediately put both hands to his head, letting go of the box of fake Vongola rings.

"Let go of Tsuna!" Dino exclaimed after a beat of surprise, letting his whip loose.

"Kah!" Squalo growled as he swung his swords, letting explosives shoot out of his blade. Dino and the others had to shield their eyes, but I stood unblinking this time. This was the part where Squalo stole the box and went for the roof…

Why wasn't he doing that?

Squalo was holding up his sword and as if in slow motion, he pointed it to Tsuna's neck. I immediately rushed forward into the dust and burst out to clean air, hoping that I wouldn't be too late.

I had often wondered of course, why Squalo left Tsuna living even after he realised the rumours were true and there _was_ another Tenth Vongola Boss candidate left living. It was because the other candidates were dead that Reborn was sent to Tsuna after all.

Dashing forward, I grabbed his arm with my left hand. Throwing off my sunglasses with the other and grabbed my gun, I pointed it at him all with one motion. Squalo stiffened, and I prepared myself. He was much more experienced than me, after all.

"Don't." I said quietly, looking at him seriously in the eye. "Get your rings and leave."

Squalo threw a narrowed glance at me, the gun, and his sword and lowered his sword slightly. Throughout all this, Tsuna had been staring at the gun in my hand in shock.

"Aren't you going to kill me?" He asked in his raspy deep voice, still smirking.

"I will if you kill him." I replied quietly.

"Why not now?"

"You're needed."

"What a Brighteye thing to say. Looks like what _that _person said was true after all." He shot a look at Tsuna. "Ha, this boy isn't worth it anyway," he finally said, dropping Tsuna and picked up the box before blurring up to a roof somewhere. I bent down, helping Tsuna sit up.

"Are you okay, Tsuna?"

"Are you guys okay?" Dino came running, bending down to Tsuna's level. Tsuna shook his head a bit to clear his head before smiling at Dino.

"S-somehow." Tsuna said, dazed look on his face.

"Soft as always, Bucking Bronco!" Squalo's voice came from above. "For that girl's sake, I'll leave their lives in your hands. But I'll take these with me!" Squalo held up the box of fake Vongola rings, face victorious. "VOI!"

Dino and Basil immediately leapt to their feet. "The Vongola rings!" Basil yelled, his face holding a panicked expression.

"Vongola rings?" Tsuna questioned. I put a hand on his shoulder and he looked at me. I shook my head, indicating it would be explained later, and he nodded before looking back at Squalo.

"See you!" Squalo said, exposing a shark grin. Then he did a flashy back flip over the other edge of the building, and Basil hobbled forward, holding an obviously heavily injured arm.

"H-halt!" He stumbled as he tried to run forward. Collapsing on his knees, he made a move to get up again.

"Don't push yourself." Dino said as he approached him. He bent over, and was going to check if where Basil was injured when Reborn stepped forward, back in his normal suit.

"Pursuing him wouldn't be smart." Reborn said with his face in a serious expression.

"Reborn!" Tsuna said, turning towards him as I helped him get up. "Why are you stepping out now? Why didn't you help me?"

"I'm not allowed to attack him," Reborn said with a cute tilt to the head, face serious.

"Why not?"

"Because he's in the Vongola Family as well."

Tsuna's reaction was immediate. "Eh? A Vongola Family member almost killed me?"

I left around then, checking Gokudera and Yamamoto with the rest of Dino's family members.

"Are they alright?"

"They're not in good shape, but Squalo took it easy on them after all. If he didn't, then they would have been in a worse condition. They will be fine after proper treatment," said Romario. They proceeded in hoisting them up, and I stepped back.

"That's good." I breathed a sigh of relief and finally put my gun back into the hidden holster strapped to my thigh; it was accessible through a fake pocket in my pants. Grey had told me to get used to it, as it was my secondary weapon after all.

I glanced around, taking in the situation. Did I have to continue sticking with Tsuna?

There weren't going to be any more attacks, right? I searched my memory, and I nodded to myself. Yes, no more attacks until later, unless some strange thing changed and Squalo came back (highly improbable).

I quietly left, knowing I had some research to do. One thing Squalo said was bothering me.

_That _person. 'What _that_ person said was true, after all' he said.

Who was _that_ person?

* * *

"_Stop! Stop! STOP! I just remembered I had some revision to do, bye Dino-san!"_

_Tsuna ran out of the room until a random nurse yelled at him not to run in the hospital. _

_As if he would want those scary rings! He didn't want rings; he didn't want to be Vongola Tenth! He was just normal, no-good Sawada Tsunayoshi. He didn't have an allies or enemies _because_ he _was_ normal, no-good Sawada Tsunayoshi! He had never even agreed to be Vongola Tenth, anyway! Why was he being dragged into this game of allies and enemies?_

_But thinking of allies… He stopped in his tracks, in the middle of the exit of the hospital before starting to walk again, a bit slower._

_He never really believed what Reborn said about Alice, her being some rare information collector. She had come way before Reborn after all, and she had been his first somewhat friend. She had been with him from the beginning, like Yamamoto and Gokudera, and dragged into this by him… hadn't she? _

_Although somewhere deep in his heart, call it intuition if you will, he had already acknowledged it. Alice always seemed more than what she seemed anyway. And that gun, the way that she spoke to that scary longhaired guy…_

_Did that mean… she wasn't really was his friend? She only became friends with him because she was some, some stupid information collector and she wanted _information_ on him_?

_No, he shook his head wildly, he didn't believe it. He knew Alice, knew her for a few years. She would never be like that. Alice did what she wanted; that was just how she was._

_But there was there was that niggling feeling, refusing to worm out of his heart._

_For why else would she, popular, smart, pretty, befriend the plain, useless, un-athletic, dame-Tsuna?_

* * *

I screwed my my forehead for another set of keywords I could use. Ah, yes. That was a bit long, but it should still work, right? Typing it, I pressed enter. The computer beeped.

_[700 results for keywords 'people who have interacted with the Varia recently']_

I cursed, trying to restrict the search, but somehow the results were always over five-hundred.

This information network was _too_ good.

"Miss, it's time for your daily strength training." Grey knocked from the outside. I pushed my rollie chair out; time passed so quickly! I was just about to switch of the air-conditioning (no use in wasting money) when Grey spoke up again. "And oh, I got something strange in the mail."

"Huh?"

"It seems like some ring of some kind…"

I paled and rushed out, practically snatching the letter from Grey's hand. "Sorry, Grey. I'll look at this first." Slamming the door, I stared at the half-ring in my hand in horror.

What was this? The ring gleamed with dull lustre in the dim room. This…this didn't make sense! How could this happen?

Though, looking at it carefully, it wasn't exactly the same as the other Vongola Rings. It was still shaped as a shield, but there wasn't as much detail. Instead, there was a spiky shape in the middle of what I presumed, as the Vongola Clam.

But first things first… I flew back to the computer and hastily typed in the password. Then I searched 'First generation guardians of Vongola'.

The first names that popped up on the page were the ones that I expected; Giotto, G, Asari, Alaude, Lampo, Daemon, Knuckle. Then there was one, highlighted on my page, the last name on the page.

_[Number Three; Codename Alayne Brighteye – Guardian to the first Generation family of Vongola]_

My eyes widened as I read it, the ring dropping to the floor in my shock.

Was _this_ what Mukuro meant? Bill putting people into the storyline, and needing to keep putting people in to keep the plot in check? I kept staring at the name on the list.

But this just meant I couldn't join Tsuna's family even more so than I thought.

Searching deeper, I realised that the eighth Guardian spot hadn't really been filled for every generation. Only the first, second and eighth generation bosses ever had their eight guardian position filled, and all of the 'extra' guardians had been Brighteyes.

I sat in my chair, staring at the screen and mentally cursing 'Alayne Brighteye'. What was she _thinking?_ Joining Giotto's family…

_[The Brighteyes inherit the mistakes of the past…]_

I shut down the computer, picking up the silver ring. It gleamed in my hand, a solid proof of a huge, tangible mistake.

I will not continue this mistake. I'll give this back this back to Iemitsu.

* * *

"_Gokudera's ring is the Ring of Storm, Yamamoto's the Ring of Rain." Reborn said, looking at each of them in turn._

"_You're right," Gokudera said, peering at Yamamoto's ring, "It's different from mine."_

"_You sure?" Yamamoto looked at Gokudera. Tsuna interjected._

"_What's with the 'Storm' and 'Rain' parts? This isn't a weather report."_

"_The first Vongola family had a variety of unique members," Reborn answered, "their traits helped shape the rings. The first was said to be like the sky; colourful and engulfing everything and open to all things. So his was the ring of the sky."_

_Tsuna looked at Reborn, absorbing this information. After a pause, Reborn continued talking. "And the other rings were named after the other kinds of weather that colour the sky. _

"_The merciful shower that washes all away; the ring of Rain. The turbulent gale that fiercely blows; the ring of Storm. The drifting cloud that is trapped by no-one and walks its own path; the ring of Cloud. The illusion that prohibits knowledge of its true nature; the ring of Mist. The orb of fire that brightens the great sky; the ring of Sun. The thunderbolt that strikes a zealous blow; the ring of Thunder. The lights in the sky that watch and know all; the Ring of Star._

"_But with the rings you have right now–" Reborn continued his spout of information. _

"_Stop!" Tsuna yelled._

"_What is it?" Reborn asked mildly._

"_Look, I just don't want mine! Right, guys? Right?" Tsuna glanced at Gokudera and Yamamoto for support. He smiled as Yamamoto agreed with him._

"_Sorry, I play baseball. I can't wear rings." Yamamoto said with his usual grin, holding the ring up so they could take it back. "I don't really understand all this anyway." _

"_Right?" Tsuna said with a big smile. "He means it's a big trouble to hang onto these rings! That long-haired guy from yesterday is going to come after us!" He continued babbling. Yamamoto froze._

"_He's… coming?"_

"_Yeah. Dangerous, isn't it? Within ten days, if things go badly." Tsuna chattered away, still unaware of the thoughts whirring in his future guardians' brains._

"_Ten days, huh?" Yamamoto murmured._

"_Huh? What's the matter?" Tsuna questioned, finally realising that something was wrong. _

_Yamamoto suddenly threw it up and caught it with a smile. "This is mine, right? I'll hang onto it."_

"_Huh?" A confused Tsuna looked up at Yamamoto._

"_I don't think I can stick with being a loser." Yamamoto flashed a grin in Tsuna's direction. "Bye!" He ran out the hospital, leaving a blank faced Tsuna._

"_Ya-yamamoto?"_

"_In ten days, I'll be reborn as a man who won't put this ring to shame!" Gokudera also raced out after Yamamoto, flashing a thumbs up at Tsuna. Tsuna was left standing there mildly shocked. When did his plan of getting rid of the rings go so wrong?_

"_Hey, Gokudera-kun too? W-why?"_

_As Dino went up to Tsuna, Reborn tilted his fedora over his eyes, before taking it off to prepare for his Master Pao Pao costume. Iemitsu should be taking care of the other rings by now; but he was worried over two things_

_First was Mukuro and how he was refusing the Guardian spot. Reborn could only think of him as Tsuna's Mist Guardian, no-one else fit the bill so perfectly as Rokudo Mukuro._

_Second was Alice, who was also the only one that he believed could ever become the elusive 'Star Guardian'. Brighteyes were notorious over many things. One of them was that it was insanely difficult to make them join a family. The other was secluded to Vongola only; they refused Guardian spots like crazy. Even after chasing after them to fill in Guardian spots, only three out of nine ever succeeded. And without counting Primo…_

_He only hoped, as he put on his elephant hat, that Alice would be one of those that easily accepted._

_After all, they cleared the first hurdle pretty easily._

* * *

"Sawada Iemitsu. I knew you would come."

He came out from behind a pole in his orange jumpsuit thing, grinning and scratching the back of his head. "Ahaha, how did you know I was there?"

I gave him a look. "I was waiting for you. I knew you would check around with the Guardian's training. After all, they're the future guardians for your son."

"How scary, Brighteyes even know what and why I'm doing these things! That's why you're perfect for the Star guardian, eh?"

"That's what I'm here for." I stood up from my position against the wall, holding up the ring. "I'm refusing."

Iemitsu didn't look surprised at all, but just sighed and tilted his helmet over his eyes. "I was afraid of things happening like this." I raised an eyebrow, but walked forward and placed the ring into his hand. He shook his head and pushed it back. I frowned, and he quickly started speaking. "I know you don't want this."

"Yes, so keep it with you."

"No, I was just about to suggest that you keep it just until the end of the ring battles."

I looked up at him curiously. "So you already knew that the ring battles are inevitable."

"Yes, Xanxus must be stopped."

"Hn." I copied a Hibari sniff of disapproval, but tucked the ring back into my pocket. Iemitsu smiled at this, and grinned at me.

"I heard from a little birdie that Rokudo Mukuro owes you something, correct?"

"Yes. Why?" I asked suspiciously.

"Come with me? I'm having a little trouble on that front."

"Why should I help you? You should have a plan, right?"

"Yes, but it is a last resort thing. I would try not to use it if possible. When you're striking a bargain, it would be best not to threaten, after all."

I debated a little.

"You're having… trouble?"

Iemitsu nodded. "Yes," he laughed while scratching the back of his head, "I've tried for three days, but he keeps refusing me!"

"Okay." He brightened, and I held up a finger. "Only I won't go with you. I'll give you these arguments instead, and in a last resort situation, call upon the debt he has towards me."

He looked a bit unsure, but I wrote down the notes and gave it to him. Although I would like to go with him, that would be ruining canon, wouldn't it?

* * *

"_I'm here to make that proposal again, Rokudo Mukuro!" Iemitsu said strongly, not even squinting at the sunlight glaring into his eyes from the window behind Chrome. Mukuro's voice came eerily from her mouth._

"_I will never join the Mafia. Leave."_

"_But this will greatly aid…" Iemitsu protested, trying to get some diplomatic ending. It would never work with Mukuro. In Guardian terms, he was the Mist after all. He paused, before looking at some notes in his hand. Mukuro/Chrome raised an eyebrow; what trick was this Mafia scum going to use now?_

"_Mukuro, being Tsuna's Mist Guardian has many benefits."_

"_I just said that I will never join Mafia."_

"_But the girl, Chrome, hasn't. She can join in your stead. She is technically a different will than you, Mukuro. You get a powerful ring, and also you can get closer to Tsuna, which makes it easier for you in the future to possess his body. All these pros and the only cons is that not you, but your host body joins Mafia. How is that a bad deal?"_

_There was a pause, and Iemitsu stiffened when Mukuro gave a laugh. "That note isn't yours is it?"_

_Iemitsu gave him no answer, but that was answer enough for Mukuro._

"_I bet they were written from a certain yellow-eyed friend we have. Some of that information there only one of her family would know. And I've heard that the Vongola are slightly better than other Mafias; you wouldn't sell off your son."_

"_Will you join, Mukuro?" Iemitsu said instead. Chrome's face twisted into a fake smile, and after a few minutes of deliberating, he laughed._

"_Okay, I will let my dear Chrome to join your little Mafia family. Tell Alice-chan that my debt to her has been cleared. Ah, I'm a bit tired…" _

_Iemitsu handed the ring over to Chrome officially and left after that. Outside, when he stepped into a car and took out a phone. Pushing some numbers in, he waited for the person to pick up._

"_Yes, Mukuro has agreed." He paused a bit, and gave a sheepish laugh. "Yeah, about that… Well, Mukuro doesn't have a debt to you anymore. Sorry." Another pause. "I know you're a bit annoyed, but can you reconsider being Tsuna's Star Guardian?"_

_Another pause and Iemitsu snapped his phone shut. Still no, huh…_

_Now that Mukuro had accepted, Iemitsu had an even harder nut to crack._

* * *

I yawned through class as the teacher droned on about something or another. I brought the notes on 'How to Use Chopsticks' from Jack to school, and reading about them but not really allowed to try them out wasn't really helping much…

"Sir, I'm going out."

The teacher sighed, but waved me away. I bowed as the hair on either side of my face brushed the sides of my face.

Grey had done my hair today, saying I should get used to hairstyles using chopsticks if I was to use them as a weapon (he wasn't actually surprised, strange thing was). It was a comparatively simple style, pulling the hair up and leaving the hair in front hanging. It felt strange. I was tempted to pull it out, but as I didn't know how to actually do my hair up again… (Fans this morning mobbed me about how my hair was lovely today. It was tiring).

So I went up to the roof, the only place I really knew that the teachers never really patrolled.

And the sight that met my eyes.

Hibari was holding the ring over the side of the roof, with Dino looking positively panicked.

"Wait, wait!"

Romario started snickering at the back, and I sidled up to him.

"Dino's student really likes fighting, doesn't he Alice?" He asked me though his laughs. I glanced at Hibari, and gave a chuckle.

"Like doesn't cut it, Romario."

"All right," Dino suddenly said, holding up his whip in his 'ready combat' position. "Then it's a deal. If I win in a serious fight, you're going to join Tsuna's family."

Hibari only smirked. You could see he was truly excited; Dino must've been a better opponent than he expected. "If you can."

They lunged at each other at the same time. I looked away from their epic battling and gestured to Romario.

"I'll be in the corner over there, not bothering anyone okay? I'm trying out some new techniques."

"Okay, Alice."

Flashing him a grin, I headed over to the corner. Taking out a pair of extra chopsticks (taking the chopsticks out of my hair when I couldn't put them back was out of the question), I read about a technique which let you disarm an opponent.

As I tried it out, imitating movements and imagining pretend opponents (I'll ask Grey to be my dummy later on), I thought about Tsuna again.

Was the plot going okay?

I sighed.

I never knew making sure the plot was going steady was so tiring. Every night I would run things over in my head thinking _'Did I do too much?'_ with that continued by _'No, if I didn't _that_ then _that _would have gone…' _then _'should I have done something for…'_

Added to that, I was still trying to find out whom that person that Squalo was talking about… It was enough to make anyone tired.

I groaned, and flopped on my front. Whatever, I'll just sleep in this sunny corner. I think I deserved it, anyway.

Did I bring this on myself when I said I was going to keep the plot in check? I should've just acted like normal, detached. After all, the plot would move by itself…

No! I shook my head and turned over so I was lying on my back. I said I would do this, what am I thinking _now?_ I can't back out. I was seriously tempted to get up and bang my head on the wall to get my thoughts straight, but wasn't bothered to do so because this part of the roof was too comfortable…

I fell asleep to the sounds of Dino trying to reason Hibari, snickering and fighting sounds.

* * *

"Ah, Tsuna!" I looked up to see Tsuna rushing at me. I stopped trying to hold my chopsticks correctly (because it wasn't working), and tried to smile.

"Alice!" He ran up to me, and put his hands on his knees panting hard. "Where were you yesterday after five?"

I tilted my head. "Umm, Grey said that we would get an early dinner so we started cooking at around four thirty to five, then we ate." I shuddered, "It was horrible, I couldn't use chopsticks and Grey didn't allow me to eat anything that I didn't pick up by chopsticks…"

"Oh." Tsuna smiled. "So it wasn't you either…" Mumbling something about Lambo, I frowned at Tsuna, and was about to question him until he ran off.

"I'll go now! Thank you!" He yelled over his shoulder as he continued to run off. I blew hair from my face, and started walking down the school hallway again, scowling at my chopsticks.

However I held it, I couldn't make the tips go near each other. How did people eat with these things?

* * *

"Alice, you're so absorbed in your book!"

"Eh, Dino. Aren't you fighting Hibari…?"

"Ahaha, we stopped for lunch." Huh? I didn't even know they did that. Wasn't Hibari too battle thirsty to even think about food? Dino plopped beside me, looking around. "Oh, this corner is pretty nice. I didn't realise there was this space here."

The corner I had secluded myself it for training (just like Tsuna's cliff, Gokudera's forest, Yamamoto's dojo and Hibari's roof) was an area about two metres by three metres with one side having a green fence that stopped anyone from falling off. Opposite the fence was the school's water tank, and there was a wall blocking the view of another building's roof on my left. On the right, the water tank jutted out, so that you had to squeeze through.

It was pretty spacious, absolutely clean, no spiders or bugs or insects, shady (at the right times) and perfect for stance training (and relaxing).

"Yeah, I found this spot a few months ago."

"Nice."

We sat in silence for awhile.

"So how many days has it been?"

"Three. To be honest, Kyoya is a bit scary."

I turned towards Dino. "Huh?"

"I can feel him improve by every day. It's as if his potential is limitless."

I smirked mentally. That sounded like Hibari.

"Oh well, I better get back to my chopstick training…" I got up, and Dino raised an amused eyebrow.

"What can you do with chopsticks?" He laughed a bit as he sat up as well. I grinned at him.

"Surprisingly, a lot. I've learnt to gut, stab, bash, insert it into vulnerable places, disarm… and poke."

Dino, who had been looking paler by every word on the list (a very Tsuna-like reaction), gave a tiny laugh at the last one. Probably trying to reassure himself or something.

"Poke?"

"Yeah." I nodded, smiling to myself, "There's this spot on your neck that when you poke it hard enough with a thing smaller than a finger, it would immediately cause a person to faint, another spot where if you poke it hard enough, would cause spasms through the lower body for two minutes…"

I trailed off to Dino staring at me in horror.

"…?" I gave Dino a questioning glance.

"…Haha!" Dino laughed nervously, getting up. "I think that's enough! Kyoya would be waiting for me by now. Bye Alice!" He left, tripping over his feet, then banging his head on the water tank, then had his feet slip from under him as he tried to get up. I sighed.

"Here, I'll help." I hauled him up, and he laughed sheepishly.

"Romario has gone lunch break too, and without him here…" He trailed off.

"I know, better get him before Hibari comes back."

Dino paled.

"I didn't think of that. Bye, Alice!" He ran off.

I stared at his back, and then took out the old book about "How To Attack With Chopsticks" from my pocket. Flipping through for the fifth time or so, I grimaced at some of the pictures. Some were pretty gruesome…

"Alice."

All too familiar. I turned my head with a chagrined face.

"What, Reborn?"

"Giannichi's son, Giannini has come."

"Oh, the weapon tuner? Sorry Reborn, I don't think my chopsticks need tuning…"

Reborn shrugged and hopped down. "Just thought you would want to know." He looked at me, and his eyes seemed to gleam. Uh oh. Gleaming eyes, not a good sign. "You have the Vongola Ring around your neck. Have you accepted the position?"

"No. Iemitsu wouldn't take it back, and I was afraid to lose it, that's all."

"Hmm." Reborn looked away, and tilted his fedora downward. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He hopped back onto the roof. "I hope you think this over."

I ignored him and looked back at my book. The words blurred in front of my eyes; something about shoving the chopsticks up a pant leg and pulling. I would never join Tsuna's guardian family. After all, I have changed the plot a bit already, just by existing.

Sighing, I flipped the page and winced at another particularly bloody drawing.

* * *

"Ah, Alice-chan!"

"Kyoko. Hana… Haru?"

"Alice-chan, we were all heading towards Tsuna-kun's house for our essay. Want to come with us?" Kyoko asked, smiling and exuding sparkles. After looking at Kyoko's face, I then found that I couldn't refuse.

Kyoko had that effect on people.

"Umm, okay."

"Yay!"

"That's a relief. Now I have someone extra to rely on to protect Kyoko." Hana muttered, running a hand through her hair. At that, I grinned and nearly started laughing. Haru smiled ecstatically at me, and waved spastically.

"Alice-chan!"

"Haru." I acknowledged, and she grinned while hooking her arm with mine. I stared at it in mild discomfort before shrugging it off.

"I'm so excited to see Tsuna-san! Last time I was delivering his bento, but it has been too long since Haru has seen her true love! Ah, Tsuna-san!"

Staring at her a bit awkwardly (she was kind of disturbing) I patted her arm. "Yes, that's good. I'm sure Tsuna would like to see you too."

"Alice-chan! You really think so? Every time Tsuna sees me, his face drops and I feel insecure. But I know he wouldn't cheat on me. Tsuna-san is too nice! You agree with me right?" Not even waiting for my response, she nodded and continued, "You're as nice as Miwa-san says you are!"

Mentally deliberating why she called me 'chan' and Miwa 'san', I raised an eyebrow. "Miwa talks about me?"

Haru nodded vigorously. "She always says that she misses your tutoring lessons. And she once showed Haru her phone, and her background was a picture of all three of you in primary school! She really loves you and Setsuna-san!"

"Oh." I felt my ears reddening. I never knew she valued us this much. I shifted a little. "Thanks for telling me."

"Oh, no problem! Ah, Tsuna-san's house! I want to give Tsuna-kun a surprise. Can you shield me, Alice-chan?"

"Okay…" I trailed off, eyeing her as I was unsure what she was going to do. She unhooked her arm from mine, and hunched behind me, doing a tip-toe walk. "Uh…" I said eloquently, eyeing her confused.

"Hush! Haru isn't here, Alice-chan!"

I shrugged and went with the flow.

"Okay."

We walked towards Tsuna's doorway. Kyoko rang the doorbell and stepped back. After half a minute or so (during which Hana started complaining), the door flew open and Tsuna burst out sweating bullets. "Thanks for waiting!"

Kyoko was visibly taken aback. "A-are you alright, Tsuna-kun? You're sweating a lot!"

Heh. I chuckled in my brain. Only Kyoko would say that so bluntly. Hana sniffed.

"You can't make ladies wait, you know?"

Tsuna drooped, looking at Hana with a disbelieving expression on his face. Then he backed away, "Oh, it's nothing!" He said to Kyoko (ignoring Hana).

"Tsuna." I said, and he jumped, his eyes darting towards me in surprise.

"Alice! I-I didn't realise you were here." He laughed a bit, before his eyes were darting to the right to look at Kyoko again. "Is the living room alright for today?"

"Oh yes, it's fine!" Kyoko said happily. Tsuna started to smile. That was, until Haru popped out from behind me. His eyes bulged comically.

"Tsuna-san!" Haru exclaimed, grinning widely.

"We just ran into her." Kyoko said, smiling obliviously at Tsuna's shocked face.

"Since she said you were discussing "dreams of the future" from elementary school, I brought my old essays!" Haru beamed, jumping in front of Hana and Kyoko holding her blue bag in front of her. Hana kept her arms crossed, eyes closed position.

"Well, the more data the better." Hana muttered.

Tsuna's head drooped.

"You're right…"

We headed in then, and settled into the large living room. I noted it was four females to one male. I chuckled in my brain; it was as if Tsuna had a harem. Though Hana and I weren't going to be besotted by Tsuna anytime soon, Haru already was, and Kyoko was getting there (…hopefully).

"Did you find your old essays?" Kyoko asked to Tsuna on the opposite side of the table. Tsuna nodded.

"Yeah, from second grade." After a pause, Tsuna added a "What about you?" He leaned forward. Hana shot a warning glare at him. I smirked from my position behind Hana and Kyoko (since there were only four sides to a table, and there were five of us). It was so obvious Tsuna was trying to maintain conversation with Kyoko.

"Mine's also from second grade." Kyoko smiled, holding up a sheet of paper that miraculously had no wrinkles at all. Haru immediately fired up.

"I want to hear about it!" They both giggled a bit before Kyoko cleared her throat purposely.

"Okay. 'My dream,' by Sasagawa Kyoko. My dream is to be a ballerina, and be part of 'Swan Lake' in France as prima donna." Tsuna stared at her with a dazed look and a blush. Hana noted this and turned towards me, pointing at him in disapproval. I shrugged. She sighed, shook her head, before listening to Kyoko again. "If that doesn't work out, I want to become a police officer and catch lots of bad people!"

Tsuna suddenly went on his knees, screaming while holding his head before falling over to his side. Kyoko had leaned backwards, her sheet covering her face except her eyes while staring at Tsuna. Haru had done nearly the same reaction, but with her hands instead. Hana was the practical one.

"What's the matter, Dame-Tsuna?" she exclaimed. I grinned and put my arms on the table before letting my head rest on them while the others spouted worried comments.

"I-I'm sorry! It was nothing!" Tsuna tried to reassure us all, sitting up totally erect and shaking his head frantically. Hana raised an eyebrow, but all of them returned to their respective spots. Hana tried to shove me a bit so she could reclaim her spot, but I refused to budge. So she sighed and shifted her pillow a little.

"That's such a cool dream!" Haru chattered to Kyoko. Kyoko looked at Haru.

"But I just wrote it based on a TV drama!"

I stared at Kyoko with one eye. She noticed and smiled at me, not unnerved at all. Thinking back on it, Kyoko had never been freaked out by my eyes. She was kind, pretty (and turning beautiful, believe me. Even I could see her potential), good grades, a bit oblivious (which adds to the charm), and therefore popular.

Tsuna falling to the floor with a thud jerked me from my reverie. I blinked slowly, shaking my head a bit before turning to the other side to look at Hana. She was also reading off a crinkle free piece of paper.

"Me next. The Elder Maple Class, Kurokawa Hana."

"Wait a sec!" Tsuna shot up again from the floor. "When did you write this?"

"Kindergarten." Hana replied curtly. Tsuna drooped and sighed for the umpteenth time this afternoon. I smiled at him before turning to Hana.

"This is about our dreams from elementary," Tsuna muttered. I blinked. Oh yeah, kindergarten wasn't considered elementary in Japan.

"It's fine! This was all I had!" Hana snapped, obviously irritated. She ignored Tsuna and continued. "'I dislike children, so I want to become an adult soon.' The End." She said shortly.

This time, I actually chuckled out loud. As me laughing (out loud) was a rare incidence, Hana turned towards me with exasperated eyes. "What?"

"You disliked kids when you were a kid yourself?" I asked between my soft chuckles. Hana huffed.

"Yes. Have a problem?"

"No."

"Then don't complain."

"But I wasn't complaining, Hana!" Her forehead in a frown, she waved to the old and crumpled piece of paper in my hand.

"Your turn, then."

"This is from sixth grade just before we went to middle school. Remember, Tsuna?" I nodded to him, and he jerked and stared at me with obvious confusion. I sighed. "We had to do this dream thing, I think, near the end of the year just to see if our dreams had changed. Not that I was here for the second grade thing but…" I shrugged.

"Just get on with it already." Hana grouched. I sat up and nudged her playfully before suppressing a yawn and read it. "'My Dream, Bright Alice. I want to become a normal person and when I grow old, I want to sleep, eat, and tour the world."

"That's great, Alice-chan!" Kyoko exclaimed. I blinked. Was it really that great?

I mean, my dream was to sleep and eat my retirement days away… (Not that I would, but dreams were dreams for a reason, eh?)

Haru jumped up, unable to sustain her excitement any longer. "Me next! First grade, Miura Haru. "My dream is to be Japan's best costume maker. I decided this when I wore the Tokyo Train Station costume during the costume parade at the sports festival."

Tsuna was visibly shocked. No, shocked wasn't the word to use. Chagrined?

"Right now, I'm working on a Tokyo Tower costume!" Haru suddenly changed and jumped up to an enthusiastic audience of two; Kyoko and Hana. I had slumped back onto the table enthusiastically instead, and Tsuna was still getting over the fact that Haru had changed into a Tokyo Tower costume.

"Wow, Haru-chan you're so cute!" Kyoko said from somewhere behind me.

Somehow, I think we got off topic from why we came to Tsuna's house at all…

"What about you, Tsuna-kun?" Kyoko turned from Haru twirling after about three minutes.

"Oh. Uh…" Tsuna held up his sheet hesitantly.

"Oh, I want to see, I want to see!"

Kyoko took the sheet form Tsuna's hand without him protesting; he was too busy blushing over how she had leaned so close to him.

"My nickname is Dame-Tsuna." Kyoko read, "But Mom said even if I'm No-good now, people can change. I think so too. I want to be a giant robot when I grow up.'" Kyoko laughed. "That's so cute!"

I gave a little chuckle. That was cute. Seems like Kyoko's and Tsuna's were the most normal dreams. Haru's counted, but her reasoning was strange, Hana's was funny but strange and mine was about basic needs so…

"Your stupidity is showing." Hana said to Tsuna. Tsuna immediately switched from depressed to annoyed.

Sobbing noises were suddenly heard.

"That's a wonderful dream, Juudaime! Especially the 'giant' part!"

Juudaime. Must be Gokudera.

I grinned, and drifted off. I hadn't been getting much sleep lately. I heard Gokudera trying to show Tsuna his new and improved dynamite…

"Yo, Kyoko!" I shot up from my half-doze from a certain _someone's_ loud voice.

"Eh, Onii-chan?"

Ryohei. I got up slowly, and moved past Tsuna and peoples into the hallway. Tried to, anyway. Someone really tiny shoved past me. I looked down, where I saw… a tiny Gokudera?

"Gokudera?"

Tsuna looked at me with deadpan eyes. Huh? I looked down at Gokudera shouting at Ryohei about letting enemies in or something. Oh. Maybe Tsuna thought I didn't realise Gokudera had shrunk or something.

"No, Onii-chan. That's Gokudera's cousin." Kyoko helpfully supplied.

"Oh, I see." Ryohei said, picking up Gokudera by the back of his shirt.

"Oi, can't you see them? They're right there!" A tiny Gokudera voice squeaked from the tiny Gokudera. I walked up and patted his head.

"There, there, little Gokudera."

"Stop that, freaky eyes! I think you should be able to see them too! They're on the ceiling!"

I ignored little Gokudera and sat down. "I'm tired…"

"Oi, don't ignore me! Look up at the ceiling, freaky eyes!"

"Huh…?" I looked up at the ceiling. "Nothing's there, little Gokudera."

"Little? I'll show you… Huh? Why am I small?"

I grinned, and moved out to the backyard. Watching from a distance; that was my job, right?

Wow, this patch of shade was nice. I settled down, and suddenly felt drowsy again. I knew I shouldn't have done so many late nights…

* * *

"Art thou fine, Bright-dono?"

Art? Thou? _Dono?_ Was I dreaming I was feudal era Japan or something? I opened my eyes groggily to see Basil, looking at me with concerned eyes.

"Eh, Basil? Don't call me Bright, call me Alice."

"Alice-dono."

"Err… yeah. I'm fine. Why are you asking?"

"It is nearly dinner time. Shall thou join us for dinner?"

"Um, no. It's fine. Thank you, Basil-kun."

"It was no trouble, Alice-dono."

Nearly sunset. I was helped up by the ever so gentlemanly Basil, and I reached for my phone. Mumbling a few things to Grey, I slipped it shut and smiled at Basil.

"Thank you. Tell Nana I'm leaving."

"I shall. Have a good time."

"Okay."

So I walked out, still a bit drowsy. Maybe a cup of tea would wake me up or something…

* * *

"Fuuta! Don't go wandering off too far!"

"Hai, Alice-nee!" He smiled widely and waved. I waved back and continued following them. Cute kid.

For the past week (ignoring weird incidences) had been quite quiet. Yamamoto had been training madly in his dojo for Squalo, Gokudera to master his trick with the paper aeroplanes. Tsuna, with Reborn and Basil, had headed off towards the mountains yet again, and Dino and Hibari were still interlocked in their mad fight on the school rooftop with rests in between (those were the rare times that even Hibari recognised that he needed food).

Iemitsu had kept bugging me; it was annoying. I kept refusing. Of course I did, as if I was going to ruin the plot even more.

Sighing and looking up, I followed Fuuta. I had rehashed on the plot from the sack that Bill had given me, but I hadn't been counting the days. So I just kept close to Fuuta, knowing they would attack (they, as in the Varia), when Fuuta, Lambo and I-pin were alone.

Fuuta was a really nice kid; we grew a little closer in these few days I tagged along. He watched me with amusement as I struggled to eat with my chopsticks, I gave him a few suggestions on what to rank.

The only productive thing I had done in these few days was to tell Dino that I had a suspicion that the Ring Conflict would happen on school grounds. Dino, knowing Hibari well enough by then, immediately told Romario to bring a car to go to some remote place (because they couldn't well fight on a plane now, could they?).

"Fuuta!" I hurried after him. It was going to get dark soon, and I was being extra cautious towards sunset. "Fuuta, where are you?"

No response. I sighed and started walking towards the store that Lambo would most probably drag Fuuta and I-pin to visit. After all, it was nearly supper time. Lambo would get hungry; therefore Fuuta would most probably be forced to buy something for him.

Going into the store, the lady behind the counter shook her head and told me there hadn't been three kids who had come by. I stepped out, frowning. Where were they?

A black flit jumped from one telephone pole to another at astounding speed. I narrowed my eyes and immediately noted its direction and ran. Fast movement was suspicious.

Figures the only night I lost them would be _the_ night the Varia came.

"Help us! Someone help us!" Fuuta's voice screamed from the left. I swerved and ran full sprint, things passing away in a blur. When I burst out of the alley, to my left was Fuuta holding I-pin and Lambo, right was Tsuna and Reborn at the end of the street.

"Tsuna-nii!" His eyes lit up. "Alice-nee!"

"Fuuta, look out!" Tsuna shouted as he rushed forward.

I ran as well, looking at the man that was holding an electrically charged (green lighting… lightning flames?) sword-like thing. He was about to swing down with me only two steps away, when a punch came to the rescue. The man flew and crashed into a wall.

I leapt forward and stopped the guy's sword from falling onto Fuuta and the rest.

"You okay?" I asked, cursing heavy muscle men and their weapons before putting it carefully aside then checking if they were fine. Fuuta smiled up at me, and then looked at Ryohei who was putting up a cool pose.

"Vongola Family's Sun Guardian and Colonello's top student, Sasagawa Ryohei has come!" Ryohei yelled, without letting loose one Extreme at all. I whistled.

"Awesome, Sasagawa."

"Hehe, you think so?" He chuckled over his shoulder as he went into a boxing pose to anticipate any further attacks.

Explosions rang out over a rooftop, and Gokudera and Yamamoto stepped out, completing the picture. Now, if only I wasn't here…

"Why does the stupid cow have a ring?" Gokudera grumbled as he also took a defensive stance. Yamamoto only laughed.

"It's alright now."

I was still practically hugging Fuuta, and standing up I grinned at Tsuna's dumbstruck face. Only this time, the dumbstruck face was a dumbstruck face of _happiness._

"E-everyone!" Tsuna said happily. Reborn muttered something, but Tsuna yelled again and rushed forward towards us with an extremely happy face.

"Juudaime!"

"Hey, Sawada."

"Tsuna."

"Sorry for being late." Yamamoto finished, happy smile still stuck on his face.

"Tsuna-nii! It was so scary!" Fuuta rushed over to Tsuna, and I was left with the tall guys. I scowled at them.

"Why are all of you guys so tall?"

Yamamoto looked down at me. "Eh, Alice! We're not that tall."

Raising an eyebrow in response, I just turned towards Tsuna comforting Fuuta. Yamamoto pulled out a bandaid from somewhere and put it on one of I-pin's numerous scratches. I bent down and picked her up.

"You did good for being so little," Yamamoto laughed as he patted her head.

"Good job." I said quietly to her. She grinned up at me, and I squeezed her a little tighter.

"Lambo-san is hungry! Pick me up, Tsuna!" Lambo whined, rolling around on the floor in a lack-lustre tantrum of sorts. "Carry me! Carry me! Tsuna, carry mee!"

As Gokudera stomped forward with Yamamoto following, I stepped back a little.

"Are you really okay, I-pin? Sorry I couldn't come on time…"

"No, it's fine!" I-pin said in her squeaky Chinese. Heh. I patted her mostly bald head (would it count as her forehead?), and slowly followed the other two, not really listening to Gokudera's ranting about Lambo being a _Guardian._

Yeah, watching it before on the screen seemed comical. Now I was eyeing the kid in front of me (who had spotted I-pin being carried by me and whined harder because of it), thinking _can he really do it?_

Of course he can, but…

"Are you a Guardian too, Alice?" I turned to Tsuna. Blinked once, and then shook my head in a firm no.

"No."

"Alice is supposed to be your Star Guardian."

"I refused it. Sorry, Tsuna."

"What? You dare refuse a Guardian spot, freaky eyes…" As Yamamoto calmed him down, Ryohei said a happy,

"They were weaker than I thought though! It was a breeze!"

"That's just naïve." Reborn cut in. I nodded. The Varia's past track record was amazing. Tsuna only won his rings because they underestimated us _kids_. "They're just the low ranks in the Varia. The really frightening ones are…"

Reborn suddenly stopped and searched the area in front of us. A wall, trees on top of it. No people… yet.

A person jumped from the trees and landed safely, knees bent. "He's here." Reborn said needlessly.

As I squeezed I-pin a little harder, I stared at Levi. A. Than.

Varia had come. Training was over.

Let the Ring battles begin.

* * *

**A little Yamamoto Extra**

_He never really knew his mother. Whenever he asked his dad, he would smile in a tired way and look at his favourite vase placed lovingly in the corner, before putting an animated face on and launching into his escapades in trying to catch his mom's heart._

_They were funny, and he knew his father always laughed with him, but there were some times when there were too many tears for laughter to be the reason. And in those times, Yamamoto would launch himself into his dad's arms and he would hug him back hard._

_Once, when he was six or so, he asked his dad where his mother had gone; he really didn't understand death yet._

_His father looked up to the sky and pointed up, his usual grin on his face but a tell-tale twinkle in his father's crow's feet, trying to drip down but staying there by sheer willpower "She's in the sky, Takeshi, watching over us. And when we leave, we'll go join her too."_

_Maybe that's why he never thought much of death. He was reassured with the thought of his mother there, catching him when he ever really went down the path called 'death'. _

_Though, in that one time when he fell in the river and nearly drowned, he was confused in the reason why his father was crying so hard, gripping so tightly. He only slipped on the bank, that's all. He swam back, didn't he? And well, if he really did die…_

"_Don't worry, dad! I would've gotten to see mom!" He said, pasting a smile on his face. His father only shook him a bit, before hugging him tightly to his chest again._

"_Don't leave yet, Takeshi. Your old man still needs you yet."_

_And looking at his dad's uncharacteristically sad face, he resolved never to see it again. So he smiled brightly and hugged him tight._

"_Don't worry, I'm still here," he mumbled, his words a bit muffled in his father's shirt. He fell asleep a little after that, tired after the ordeal, and only remembered waking up in his bed, in his pyjamas nice and warm._

_After that, Yamamoto tried to find something safe to do. He hit on the perfect thing; baseball._

_The feeling of teamwork, the bat hitting the ball, the adrenaline rush as he tried to reach the elusive base, the satisfaction when he saw the ball he pitched securely in the receiver's glove; it was the best. He finally understood what his father truly meant by passion._

_He lived for baseball and his dad._

_He was in fourth grade when Yamamoto realised he didn't have any close friends. He was liked by the whole school, sought for in every game, a partner that everyone tried to grab like a trophy. But he realised something._

_Everyone had one or two friends who they could spill their guts to, talk about stuff like similar hobbies, do things together, argue with, just hang around in silence and still be content._

_He didn't have anyone like that. _

_Yamamoto wondered where he went wrong, but shrugged it off. It was okay; he had baseball. If he had baseball, it was fine. Baseball, his father, the sushi shop and school; his life consisted of those things only, and anything else was irrelevant._

* * *

_He only first noticed Tsuna in the kendo match. They had cancelled practice that day, and as practicing when they were cleaning the field was a bit rude, he wandered to where everyone seemed to be walking towards._

_Surprised with the result of the kendo match, when the next day came, he wondered if Tsuna could do as well in baseball. He was disappointed, but still pitched in to help clean. Team-mates were friends in his books. _

_That day, Yamamoto did something he had never done; not for years anyway. He spilled all the things he was worried about; his dropping baseball form, his grades… everything to this stranger he had never been really aware of until yesterday. _

_He thought he had made the correct choice when Tsuna echoed what he thought he should do. _

_Practice more, of course. His dad had always said; if you want to get better, throw yourself into it. _

_When he broke his arm, it was only a minor fracture, but it stopped him from joining the games. He lost his meaning in life. Baseball had supported him, held him up, a source of pride and honour._

_That broken arm stopped him from his life's passion._

_What was life without baseball?_

_He pasted a smile on his face, trying to reassure his dad that he was fine._

_The next day, he climbed to the school roof, the only building he knew that should be high enough to ensure death._

_He had never really thought much about death._

_Because his mother would be there, right?_

* * *

_Staring down was a bit disconcerting, and he was about to jump off when a stampede of students climbed up the stairs and burst onto the roof, all shouting not to do it._

_Yamamoto stared backwards in surprise. They cared… or maybe it was just concern for a fellow classmate._

_Then Tsuna stumbled forward, and he turned around this time, interested in what he had to say. He was pale, he was shaking, he was stuttering, but he got his words out. It was so honest, it was nearly heart-rending. He told Yamamoto about his real thoughts, his real feelings, his real doubts._

_Although Yamamoto was a bit confused as to why he would want apologise about that, he felt a little stirring in his chest just by his words. _

_Such honesty was rare nowadays._

"_Tsuna…" He reached out just as Tsuna stumbled, causing them both to crash over the the edge of the roof._

_During the fall, Yamamoto did not feel any life-flashing-before-his-eyes moments. Or any sudden revelations._

_The only thing that sprung to mind was his dad's face as he was crying._

_What if he wasn't there to hug him this time?_

_And for the first time, Yamamoto was afraid of death. Afraid of death, and what it would take out of his father; his father was also part of his life, wasn't he? How could he forget his father?_

_During all this, Tsuna had suddenly stripped and caught Yamamoto, stopping them from dying by doing… some bouncing movement while yelling "Save Yamamoto with my Dying Will!"_

_It was this time that Yamamoto had his revelation. Flinging everything he had into something wasn't enough; he had to do it with a strong will, a focused one. He smiled at Tsuna. He couldn't have gotten a better person to ask for advice (though he did wonder how he saved him, but he was one that took things in stride)._

_Then he noticed something moving under him and he realised he was sitting on Bright, an aspiring baseball talent. He of course moved immediately, and afterwards followed a series of bizarre events too strange to name (but definitely more fun) than anything in his whole life of school, dad, baseball and sushi shop._

_Because in a few weeks time, he had to add something to that list._

_Dad, Friends, Baseball, Sushi Shop, School._

_He had a friend that he could spill his guts to (Tsuna, you want to talk?), a friend to argue with (Don't get close to Juudaime, baseball freak!), a friend to talk sports with (YES! EXTREME BOXING!), a friend to just sit with in silence (Hey, Alice… Alice! Don't sleep in your lunch!) And they all just hung out._

_It was fun. He could say it could even rival baseball._

_With friends in his life, as cheesy as it sounds, it seemed as if the world seemed brighter. Friends cheering him on in a baseball match made him want to try harder; friends celebrating after a victory of any kind made it all the more fun and rewarding._

_What had he been missing in life, till now? Passion could take up a lifetime, but, he guessed, it couldn't fill in the gaps in the soul. But friends could, and they just seemed to turn into play-doh and fill in all the holes that his father's love couldn't reach._

_Yamamoto felt full, and happier than any adrenaline filled high from an overwhelming victory._

_He resolved this, as he surveyed his group of precious, precious friends. _

_He would do anything for them._

_After all, life was all about team work, right?_

_Just like baseball._

* * *

**Now, I honestly ask you; was any of that confusing? Typing 10000 word chapters really sometimes make editing hard. Please tell me your opinions, and maybe some suggestions to improve. And if you're not bothered to think, please just review to motivate. XD Don't worry, it WORKS!**

**This… is 25 pages. My chapters are getting longer. Shock and horror. O_O Usually, my chapters are 2000-6000. How did it grow?**

**Plot is thickening; note the **_**that**_** person. If you have caught it out in this chapter, then maybe you caught it out in the chapter where Mukuro mentioned **_**that**_** person. I say so now; they are the same. This is a tiny spoiler in a huge plot twist of sorts; reward for sticking with the story! I'm really worried how making Alice a Guardian would drop readers; I hope she wasn't Mary Sue.**

**But enough of my blabbering. I hope you enjoyed it, and as holidays have ended I really do HOPE (not the hope) that I can update next week. ^^" School has come back to haunt meeee…**


	21. Is like being torn between two things

**Okay, this is jerky. I wanted to make it more epic (believe me, I did) but someway or another it turned out like this. I'm not entirely happy about it, and my sister still isn't back to give good advice, so please read and tell me what I can improve. Please?**

**Thank you for the reviews! They were awesome, believe me. Adjusted back to school, yet again, and died from two assignments. Why is my school so strict? TT_TT**

**Please enjoy. And if you didn't (because, as said before, I'm not entirely proud of this), please tell me why!**

* * *

"_How is Iemitsu's son and his guardians like?" Lussuria asked as he twirled over, having nothing to do after dusting nearly the whole plane carriage through. Three times. He then paused and surveyed the plane. Maybe he could do a fourth round…_

"_Hmph." Squalo threw his legs onto the table and leaned back. "They're weaklings. I trashed most of them in less than five seconds."_

"_Good grief… I'm not happy that we're doing this without pay." Mammon stated flatly, sitting on Gola Mosca's held out palm. "But this is boss's order. It can't be helped."_

_Belphegor twirled his knives. "Ushishishishi~ they should be honoured they're even getting any attention from the prince."_

"_Most of them? You said most of them." A quiet voice came from a cloaked figure in the corner. Squalo shot him a narrowed glance and looked away._

"_VOI! Thinking about it makes me annoyed. The stupid Brighteye rushing out and pointing a gun at me. I couldn't detect her presence at all!" Squalo growled, and then swung his legs off the table to look towards the corner. "Looks like the information _that_ person gave you to give us is true after all."_

"_Of course."_

"_You better not disappoint us in being a prospective Star Guardian even if you're not a Brighteye."_

"_Of course."_

_Squalo growled again, ignoring Mammon muttering about his profits, Belphegor throwing knives at a dartboard (and sometimes other members of the Varia), Lussuria singing annoying songs, Gola Mosca's hissing breath and turned around to face the front of the plane again. He was annoyed with that cloaked bastard; he only sat there looking mysterious. What was his motive in joining Varia anyway?_

_A crash and a faint yell of "Trash!" The door opened to admit one Levi. A. Than into the main room of the private jet._

"_Boss says to shut up because he can't sleep." Levi said stoically, as if he didn't get kicked out the Boss's room, informing them all in his superior-sounding haughty voice. Squalo growled at him and turned away to inspect his sword. Belphegor kept throwing knives. Mammon kept muttering about profits. Lussuria continued singing._

_Basically, no-one listened to him. Levi's eyebrow twitched, his lips pursed before he turned around and tried to enter the Boss's room._

_He got kicked out. Violently. Again. _

_So he settled to sit outside his door instead._

* * *

Levi. A. Than flipped out of the trees, managing to look more than a bit ominous in the dimming light of the sunset. I-pin shivered, and I cradled her protectively. Fuuta edged towards me and hid behind me in a flash. I patted his head, before looking forward. Levi, although portrayed as weak many times, was on an obviously higher level than the fighters we just faced.

"Reborn, I'm leaving first." Reborn shot a frown at me, but quickly turned back to Levi again, looking guarded. "I'm not a Guardian anyway."

"You know the strength of the Varia. The others don't."

"I have a feeling it would be best for me to not be here." I took a step back, and when Reborn didn't do anything about it, I regretfully put down I-pin and pushed Fuuta up to the front. Them two were supposed to be here; I wasn't.

"Don't get in my way. Or I'll kill you." Levi growled with his eyes only for Lambo. I took the opportunity to escape, knowing the other Varia members would be here soon.

I jumped over a wall, and looked through a convenient crack at the situation that Tsuna and co. faced.

"Hold on, Levi." A voice stopped Levi from launching himself at Lambo. He looked back a little, to see all the Varia members there, standing behind him. Belphegor, who had been the one to call Levi back, was to the left. Then Mammon, Gola Moska, Lussuria and Squalo.

And behind Squalo…

Was that the Varia's potential Star Guardian?

Wait, weren't all the past Star Guardian's Brighteyes? Then was he one? I took out my phone, took a picture of him and his cloak, then looked at it. The phone couldn't capture his face at all, damn. I faintly heard Belphegor do his laugh, and say "Share the prey," before I ran away towards my apartment. Mentally apologising to Tsuna, I resolved to explain it to him later.

I had to check on this mysterious person that shouldn't have been here like me. Maybe he was _that_ man that Squalo was talking about.

Then maybe all my questions would be answered.

* * *

"_Normally, one set of the half Vongola rings are held by the Boss and the External Advisor," one of the Cervello explained to its audience, "and during the announcement of the successor, a completed Ring is given to the chosen seven."_

_Tsuna frowned in confusion. If there were rings for Sky, Rain, Storm, Star, Lightning, Sun, Cloud and Mist, wasn't that eight?_

"_However, this time has become an exception." The Cervello continued. "The sets of seven chosen by the two of them do not match, and each of them handed them out to whomever they chose. Meaning the seven led by Xanxus-sama chosen by the Ninth, and the seven lead by Tsunayoshi, led by Iemitsu."_

_The other Cervello stood forward. "But this time, there has been another exception; both sets of seven have found a suitable candidate for the Star Guardian. Rivincita Jared, found by Xanxus-sama. Brighteye Alice, found by Tsunayoshi. Therefore, this ring battle will have an even number. A battle like this should never have a tie."_

_She paused, letting the words sink in. Then she continued, "So in this battle, whichever side has four or more rings in their possession at any one point in time during the Ring Battles will win. Please note that stealing is prohibited."_

_Now she stepped down, and the one originally talking came back up. "Now we'll prove who is more worthy of the Rings is by having you bet your lives on them."_

"_Lives?" Tsuna gasped, stumbling backwards a bit._

"_The location will be Namimori Middle School, late at night. We will explain the details there. We will be waiting for you at eleven o'clock tomorrow evening. Farewell."_

_The Cervello jumped backwards, landing behind the wall._

* * *

"Oh, Yamamoto." I said drowsily to him, rubbing my eyes and yawning. Yamamoto laughed and fell in step next to me.

"Yo, Alice! Bad night's sleep?"

"No, just doing some late night research."

"Haha, was there a homework assignment due? But don't worry, I couldn't sleep a wink last night too."

I just didn't reply to Yamamoto's comment and nodded. Even after trying researching, searching, and even contacting Spartan Teacher Number Two to help, we both didn't get anything. It frustrated me, and utterly infuriated my teacher.

When I left, she was still searching near fanatically. Seriously, it was bordering near obsession that she couldn't find out information on him, or her.

"Yo, Tsuna!" Yamamoto clapped his hand on Tsuna's shoulder.

"Hiie! Oh, it's Yamamoto." He sighed in relief, before looking around him. "And Alice."

"…Hello." I blinked at him blearily, before slouching and continued walking forward.

"I couldn't fall asleep last night," Yamamoto said to Tsuna, "I couldn't calm down through training so I figured I should just go to school." Yamamoto said calmly. Tsuna looked at him with understanding eyes… until he stretched and looked up at the sky. "I'm so excited!"

Tsuna immediately looked at Yamamoto with a dead-panned face.

"You two are going to be late." I called over my shoulder. Yamamoto and Tsuna started walking forward at that, and Yamamoto kept talking.

"At first, all I could think of was beating the long haired guy…" he said animatedly. I tuned him out and kept walking, thinking about how the Star Guardian wasn't a Brighteye but still be a candidate. Spartan Teacher Anise was flummoxed too.

I stopped walking, suddenly aware that they had stopped walking (yet again) a bit before. I turned around to see that… Gokudera was there too? And holding a box of tomatoes, no less. Though it turned out inside the box weren't tomatoes, but paper aeroplanes. Leaving the trio to it, I slowly left.

Training, huh?

If I was to talk about my training, then it would be fail. My aim hadn't been too off to start with, so in a few days it had been corrected... to an extent. The thing I couldn't do with guns, however, was the reloading.

The guns that I was using had been provided by Grey, and each of them could hold eight bullets. Now, that was sixteen bullets in total if I had two guns.

But that wasn't nearly enough in Grey's standards, so he was trying to teach me this technique. Grey demonstrated it for me a few times. Basically, this was what he did; he reloaded the gun with one hand while the other one shot (all eight in the bullseye, leaving one hole in the target), and he could repeat this eight times. So he shot sixty-four bullets at one target twenty metres away and only leave _one_ hole in it without pausing.

Yeah, Grey was amazing. And even after that, he frowned at himself and said he had gotten "slower than his prime".

Of course I wasn't aiming for that level. Oh no, I was having trouble even trying to reload the gun with _two_ hands, let alone doing it with one hand, not looking, and shooting at the target and getting a freaking bullseye.

I sighed when I reached the school building, passing Kusakabe without a glance (Hibari was with Dino somewhere, so trusty old Kusakabe took to the practice).

"Alice!"

"Kyoko?"

"We're making these charms for Tsuna-kun and his friends," She held up some little bags, "but we didn't have time to finish them. Haru and I could only make the bags, so we were thinking if you could help? Bianchi-san's coming too…"

"Err… okay."

Kyoko smiled blindingly, and she grabbed my arm to drag me forward to some tree or another.

"Okay, you can sew this fish onto Tsuna-kun's charm."

"Okay…"

I squinted at the needle. So I had to poke this piece of thread into the eye… Then tie a knot? Yes, a knot, then just sew it on…

My stitches were huge. Literally. I felt kind of embarrassed at the messy stitching really, compared to the much (much) better ones that Kyoko and the others did. But whatever.

"We're finished!"

"Yeah, me too." I handed mine to Kyoko, who held them all up.

"Good job, all of you!" I laughed awkwardly, before standing up and heading towards the classroom. Kyoko and Hana followed me. "Oh, I had something I wanted to ask Tsuna-kun about!" Then she went running. Very unlike the Kyoko I knew.

"Oi, Kyoko!" Hana ran after her, but not before clapping me on the shoulder in a goodbye. I nodded, but went walking at my usual pace. Then someone bumped into me because they were running the opposite way. I stumbled a little, and suddenly male glares were directed at the person that bumped into me, which meant it wasn't a girl… (why else would my fan club glare at somebody?)

I looked at him. "Sasagawa?"

"Oh, Bright!"

Looking at him curiously, (because well, I didn't talk to him much), I asked a question.

"What are you doing in the second year hallway?"

"Oh, looking for Sawada. I need to tell him something to the Extreme!"

I started walking forward. Ryohei did too (the opposite way), before I tugged his arm and turned him towards the direction I was walking (studiously ignoring the fan-boy glares. They need to get a life). "You're going the wrong way."

Ryohei looked around. "Eh, really? Thank you, Bright!"

We headed towards the classroom, and I did the usual. I listened to him rant, nodding to indicate I understood. Since well, I never really contributed to discussions. I listened to Gokudera rants (adding some sarcastic remarks here and there to see him angrier), Yamamoto comments (saying a yes or a no when situation demanded it), and Tsuna's nervous laughs (teasing him a little sometimes).

After all, if I didn't contribute much, then it should be easier for them to make decisions in the future when I wasn't here.

That was my logic anyway.

"Anyway, Bright, are you participating in the fights too?" He looked down at me expectantly.

"Um, I hope not."

"Oh, I was really looking forward to it."

I patted his arm, surprised we were getting along so well. I thought I would be annoyed at least, but he was really easy to get along with. Maybe we were just opposites that way; some opposites clash, but other opposites fit each other nicely.

"I'll think about it."

I opened the door to our classroom, and there Tsuna was, about to tell Kyoko about the real situation with her brother.

"I'm sorry, Kyoko-chan, your brother's actually–" Tsuna started. Ryohei's eyes widened, and he jumped forward.

"In a sumo contest!" Ryohei yelled, hands in pockets trying to look casual (and failing miserably). Tsuna was taken aback. "I'm training because I'm going to have a sumo contest with Gokudera, Yamamoto and Bright!"

"Huh?" Tsuna exclaimed, confused yet shocked at the same time.

"Tsuna's competing in it too!" Ryohei said happily, putting an arm over Tsuna's shoulders. "And Colonello loves watching sumo."

Tsuna twitched in Ryohei's one armed embrace, trying to tug his arm from his windpipe. He was probably thinking something sarcastic or about Ryohei's unbelievable lies. As sweet as Tsuna is, he was unbelievable sarcastic at times.

"Isn't that right, Bright?" Ryohei called over his shoulder in his friendly way, grinning like an idiot as he did so. I sighed, before shuffling towards them.

"Yeah. Though I don't really want to compete. After all, sumo's a guy thing."

Kyoko looked at me, then Ryohei, then the twitching Tsuna. She smiled, reminding me of Nana when she smiled like nothing was wrong and Iemitsu didn't just ditch her for a mission once again.

"Oh, I see!"

Tsuna looked at Kyoko disbelievingly, and I frowned. Hana was looking at me, and I shook my head. I knew Kyoko well enough by now; she made those charms knowing something was up even before Ryohei made up that pathetic lie.

"Sawada, let's go already." Ryohei grinned, and dragged Tsuna out of the classroom by his arm around Tsuna's neck. I took a picture with my phone and secretly sent it to Gokudera.

I wonder what he would do, seeing his precious Juudaime manhandled like that.

Haha… I chuckled as I sat down in my corner seat, pulling down the blinds a little to shade my desk from the sun, annoying Gokudera was fun…

* * *

"_Hmm, a message?" Gokudera flipped his phone open and clicked on the button to reveal the message. "I wonder if you like this, Gokudera. Remember you have training though." He murmured as he read the message. Then he looked at the sender._

"_Oh, it's that Brighteye. Annoying, she should be training instead of sending weird messages." But he clicked on the photo anyway, and his eyes bulged out._

"_JUUDAIME!"_

_His shout echoed from the mountains, and Tsuna jerked in Ryohei's grip. _

_Did he just hear Gokudera?_

_No way, that's impossible…_

* * *

I headed out at night, at about ten-thirty. Even though I wasn't a Guardian, I still had concern for my friend's safety after all.

Friends. I would say I was mad, if I wasn't here, right now, bundled up in scarves and jackets preparing to watch Ryohei's fight. They were friends, real people with real histories with real feelings.

I had thought of not going. Just staying here, reading, maybe do some homework… But then the itch to see that Ryohei would really be alright ceased to be an itch and became an outright need, and I knew I was screwed.

I, breaking all laws of the Brighteyes, had become attached.

Shrugging my backpack on, I just resolved I'll think about it later. Staring at the Star Ring hanging from the hat stand, I grabbed it too.

Then I left, checking the chopsticks in my hair, the two guns and extra ammo strapped to my legs and in my backpack respectively, grabbing an extra scarf (I was freaking cold, damn it), and leaving through the elevator.

* * *

There was this mafia guy that stopped me from coming here early, until I showed him my Star Ring. Then he let me pass. Mentally glad I didn't have to bash him up to get in like Iemitsu and Basil did, I went into the Nami-chu building.

"_-Everyone!-" _Tsuna shouted at Ryohei, Gokudera and Yamamoto.

I knew sticking an audio transmitter to Tsuna's shirt earlier on was a smart thing to do. I settled down on the school rooftop, switching it on to hear what Tsuna and co. was saying, them being small people shaped dots from my view. There was a cage that I saw in the middle of the courtyard, with people surrounding it.

"_-tchhh-where's that stupid freaky eyes gone?-" _Gokudera growled, his voice coming out a bit scratchy from the breeze.

"_-Now now, Gokudera, you know Alice refused-tchhh-you should be more-tchhh-haha!-"_ I shook the earpiece a bit to clear the annoying 'tchhh' sounds that came with their voices and settled it in my ear again.

"_-Hmmm…-" _I heard Reborn mumble something, but either the wind was blowing extra hard, or Tsuna was too far away for me to hear what he said clearly.

This exchange, of course, was taking place after the Cervello had announced that the battle was the battle of the Sun Guardians. They were standing next to the cage now, and preparing for their first group huddle/support/shout thing. That's why they were muttering about my absence.

I was glad I wasn't there, but kind of sad because of it.

I want to be in that group…

"-_tchhh-Ryohei, fight!-Alright, I feel my extreme power overflowing!-" _Ryohei shouted, and I watched with amused eyes that I could hear his real shout from way up here. Watching as his little silhouette approached the ring, I mentally gave him a cheer.

_Go, Ryohei!_

Watching as the mini Cervello checked the rings on Ryohei and Lussuria, I played with my chopsticks and hefted my binoculars. The Varia was there, right?

No, stupid question. Of course they were there.

Adjusting my binoculars just a bit, I leaned forward to search them. Yup, there was Mammon, and Belphegor, Squalo, Gola Mosca, and Levi. Panning my view slightly to the left, I saw him.

Rivincita Jared. Yamamoto told me his name after asking why I was spacing out so much at lunch, and I nearly flew from the classroom to go back to my apartment and check his name. I made do with texting Spartan Teacher Number Two instead.

He joined Varia a few weeks ago, about a month and a half. Known for his black cloak he always wore and his mask to hide the parts of his face that his hood couldn't reach. Extremely secretive, the only thing SPNo.2 found out about him was that he was sent by another person.

Most probably big in the underworld, but annoyingly untraceable. But not if my computer whiz Spartan Teacher had anything to do about it.

I watched until Ryohei shattered the lights in the cage, and suddenly it was so dark I couldn't see what was happening. So I shrugged and went downstairs, listening to Reborn's comments as a way of update in my earpiece as I plodded through the dark corridors.

I'd better not show myself. Reborn might take it as a sign that I want to join, otherwise.

* * *

The next day, I was cold. The weather report said that it was going to rain later in the afternoon or early evening, with a chance of thunder storms.

Though, when I think about it, I wonder how the Cervello knew there was going to be a thunderstorm today. Lambo's fight was tonight, right?

I rounded the corner, my neck still feeling the chill through two scarfs. Brighteyes were nearly always cold. In summer, my hands would still be as cold as winter. That didn't stop us from feeling the warmth, however.

And what can I say? Feeling warm feels much nicer than being freezing all the time.

Walking down the school hallway and into the toilet, I did business as usual and was about to step out when a voice stopped me.

"You know Sasagawa Kyoko?"

"Yeah."

I stopped in my tracks, peered through the cracks of the door and started listening. Feeling like an eavesdropper, a pervert and a shoujo manga supporting cast (how often does a supporting character in a shoujo manga listen to something in a toilet? In every single one, I tell you), I listened carefully.

"It seems like she knows why Yamamoto-sama and Gokudera-san is away for so long."

"She has been hanging around them a lot, hasn't she?"

"Really, I can't stand her up-beat, bubbly, happy attitude all the time. Doesn't she seem fake? She's so _perfect,_ beautiful, popular with the guys, nice, smart, and even has an older brother that's in a sports club so we can't do anything to her."

There was a pause, and from the limited view I could see, they were applying make-up. Seemed like they were in the same grade as me, and consequentially Kyoko and Yamamoto and such.

"…Hey, isn't her brother away because of injuries or something?" The person continued.

They were plotting, that much was obvious. To be serious, I was kind of shocked. This was _Katekyo_ for heaven's sake, where these types of things didn't happen. Bullying that's not from the Disciplinary Committee is near non-existent with Hibari (though it did happen), these dramatic types of things just _didn't happen _you know?

But Kyoko never really had many female friends. Was she another case of Yamamoto-ness? Even at camp in primary, she approached me because 'she thought she didn't know anyone here'. She has shown she's perceptive, she didn't stop fan-boys because she honestly didn't care, but were there any friends? Hana, and then me. She only talked to me, Hana and Haru for the past year, serious friend talk, at least.

That… was sad. Kyoko wasn't fake by any means (though if faking obliviousness counts, then sure, she was the queen of fake), but realising such a nice girl was targeted because she was nice…

Wasn't this a classic example of jealousy? Or maybe, 'envy' would be better wording.

I finally flushed the toilet, and stepped out. The two girls jerked, one gave a startled shriek.

"Bright…"

I nonchalantly washed my hands, taking my time with the soap and watching them from the corner of my eye.

I didn't understand why I cared so much. But maybe because I understood how they felt.

Did I mention before that I was invisible in my first life? Not, literal invisible like in here, in Katekyo, but as in social invisible. Before I found my first friend, it was like the whole class ignored me or something. It wasn't even like Tsuna, where they all made fun of him. It could've been much more preferable than being ignored. Being ignored meant that no-one noticed you, maybe didn't know if you existed or not.

And the only thing that made people talk to the invisible person was Amanda.

Amanda was rich, pretty, she was _shining_. Popular, both girls and guys liked her. But she became the friend of me, tiny, invisible, ignored me in fifth grade. She just one day strode up to me, shoved a hand in front of my face and grinned, saying "I want you to become my friend." (Yeah, she was kind of bossy, now that I think about it…)

So we stuck together, and I found she was like Ryohei, an opposite that seemed to match. She liked me as well, and we went to the same high school. And there she shone even more, and I couldn't figure out if I was envious of her, or if I was happy that she was my friend. I guess that was why I clung to my books so much, aiming to be top of the grade, proving that I was at least in one aspect better than Amanda.

That stupid torn feeling, that thin line between of admiration and jealousy, respect and envy was one that I knew, no, _understood_ very well.

"You may know I'm a friend to Kyoko." I said conversationally. The two girls shrank back from me, and one prepared to go out the door. "Wait, don't leave yet."

"What do you want, Bright?" One practically hissed at me. "Going to get your sidekick fan boys and get revenge?"

I tutted and finished soaping my hands.

"I never asked for them, you know. They just kind of sprung up like daisies."

They waited, so I decided to annoy them a bit by turning on the tap and washing my hands slowly. When one of them decided to explode, I interjected right on time.

"You shouldn't do things like that, you know. You're young; you have a life in front of you. Why are you doing things like this?"

They looked at me, and one of them spat into the sink.

"You," she said while pointing an accusatory finger at me, "sound like my mom. Let's go, Mitsuki."

Mitsuki stared at me instead, not listening to her friend who I decided to call wannabe-blonde-number-one. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she flinched back (probably from my eyes). So I countered it with a smile.

"Mitsuki, is it?"

Now, when I looked at her smiling back shyly at me with her make-up half done, I wondered why I was doing so much. Maybe because I kind of felt like they were younger sisters; they were fourteen fifteen, and I was sixteen (or, if my mental age ever grew and you counted the years in my last life, more than twenty by now). They had a life to grow up in, watching these types of things were just distressing.

Maybe it was like those cheesy stories after all; maybe those hoodlums on the street just need a guiding light.

After all, if someone throws bricks they're bad. If another watches that someone throw bricks and walk away, they're worse. Then if I say opposite, that if someone stops the guy from throwing bricks, they're good, and if someone tries to help both the person who throws bricks and the victim, they're even better.

Was my logic flawed? Or maybe I was just trying to console myself that I could actually contribute to something in this world.

A slight change for the better, maybe.

"Yes," she replied to me still a bit tentative. Wannabe-blonde-number-one looked at me, and then Mitsuki and harrumphed.

"You, Mitsuki, aren't my friend anymore." She sniffed out. Mitsuki immediately looked regretful, and started walking towards her. So I stopped her by poking her with a chopstick.

_Don't, _I shook my head, trying to convey what I thought. She looked at me, then wannabe-blonde-number-one and she stopped, looking away. Wannabe-blonde now widened her eyes, glared at me and whirled away, her dyed blonde hair practically slapping into my face before storming out drama queen style.

So much friendship drama. And why did I have to go in the middle of this anyway?

Oh right, they were plotting about Kyoko…

I banged my head on the toilet wall. Mitsuki stared at me.

"Um, are you alright?"

"Yeah." I looked at her from the corner of my eye. And there she was, a mess that I'd made because I butted in.

Just because of a few stupid memories.

I sighed and banged my head on the wall again. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," I muttered to myself. Mitsuki just watched me, fidgeting slightly. Feeling a bit sorry for her, I stopped (my forehead was getting sore anyway) and tore off a piece of paper towel to wipe my forehead.

"My name is Bright. Call me Alice." I introduced myself, holding out a hand. She took it and was about to introduce herself before I interrupted (because I was polite like that). "Yes, I know, Kaiyou Mitsuki."

"Y-you know me?"

"Yes I do." I replied shortly, still a bit annoyed at myself for barging into friendship problems. I stormed out of the female toilets, dragging her behind me, glaring at anyone who dared even stare at the strange sight of me dragging one of the known female rebels in the grade.

"E-everyone knows you, Bright-san because you're in the popular crowd and you get first in the grade and how you can escape Hibari-san and I never expected that you would know me who's in the bottom of the grade practically, even my parents have given up on me really…"

"Shut up." I said.

She shut up immediately.

I sighed. "Since, Mitsuki," she jerked at me not using an honorifics, "I dragged you out of your friend group, I kind of have to take responsibility. You're in 2B, right? We should be right next to each other since I'm in 2A. Your friend is in 2D, so it should be fine…" I muttered to myself a bit before her quiet fidgeting made way into my conscious mind. "What?"

"Um, can you let go of my hand now? People are staring…"

I looked around and immediately starting frowning. "Go away." I told them and without taking note of how they reacted, I, without letting go of her hand (what if she ran away?), led her into my classroom.

"Kyoko, I have made a new friend. Her name is Mitsuki."

Kyoko looked up and smiled a sunny beam at us.

"Alice! Hana and I were just talking about you! And your new friend?" She peered around me, and saw Mitsuki hiding behind me. "Hello, my name is Sasagawa Kyoko."

Mitsuki glared at me. I grinned. "Say hello to your new friends, Mitsuki. And wipe that bad make-up off your face."

"Alice!" Kyoko admonished, "She might be a little overwhelmed by you. You know how you are."

"Eh? I was really friendly though. I think…" I trailed off teasingly, but I don't think they knew because I had put on my blank face. Hana especially was looking at me with dead-pan eyes.

"Mitsuki? Isn't she one of those side-kicks from Watanabe's fail Yankee group?"

Mitsuki blushed, and I glanced at her before looking at Hana. "She had reformed from some recommendations from me."

'Oh, that's wonderful!" Kyoko smiled her pink sparkle smile at her. But after thinking about Kyoko's situation in the oh-so-fateful toilet, I didn't think it as annoying as usual. "Mitsuki-chan, do you think a little yellow would be good here?"

I'd expected this reaction from Kyoko. I think in her books, any person that's a friend's friend is a friend to her. I nodded a little at Mitsuki, who looked bewildered at this turn of things. Of course, she was now on friendly terms with the virtually unapproachable Kyoko (who she had been plotting to bully only a few minutes ago), broken up with her old friend group, and dragged here by force.

Her mascara was streaking. I pretended not to notice and abandoned her to Kyoko (I was nice like that), opened up a small laptop and researched Watanabe.

Turned out that Watanabe's full name was Watanabe Mako, she had fallen with some bad groups, started taking drugs when she was thirteen, and things just went downhill from there.

I shook my head and closed it, looking out the window to the clouds and freezing breeze.

Stories like these just served to remind me that this was a real world, after all. Not some story book, not a place where everything turns out for the best.

I sighed, and turned my head to look at Mitsuki, who was shooting desperate glances at me while talking awkwardly to Kyoko and Hana.

Deciding to be helpful, I went back and socialised. I noted happily that Hana and Mitsuki seemed to like each other. Kyoko turned around to smile at me, holding up the charms that she still hadn't finished. The misshapen tuna was still there, but she had sewn words on it or something.

"Is this better?"

"Yeah. Nice." I shot an awkward thumb up.

Kyoko frowned exasperatedly at me and made me hold it, explaining something as she went. Her words went in one ear and out the other, and I found myself staring at Kyoko feeling bewildered.

Hana laughed, Mitsuki chuckled but immediately stopped, and Kyoko kept to her soft ranting about colours and threads and cloths. I settled for just frowning seriously and nodding, hoping Kyoko wouldn't notice I didn't understand anything she was ranting about at all.

* * *

And that was a normal school day of friendship drama. I bundled up in my jackets and my scarves again, heading out early and holding my half star ring.

"If the fights on the rooftop, I can't hide there now can I?" I mumbled to myself as I climbed the stairs. Maybe I could go sit on top of the opening to the staircase, which was definitely a place where Tsuna wouldn't think to look… probably.

So I settled down, lodging my black umbrella in a convenient ring in the cement, bundling up my jackets and settling down on the slightly damp cement.

After I settled down, it started absolutely pouring. Which probably meant that Tsuna and the rest were coming. So I waited, staring (with colour contacts) at Levi. A. Than in front of me. He was soaked through, and standing resolutely next to the other entrance to the roof.

It was exactly fifteen minutes later that the Cervello jumped onto the roof (they seem to jump everywhere they go, seriously), and two minutes after that Tsuna and co. with Lambo came.

Looking at our hero for the day… Lambo was whining in Tsuna's hands, wanting to go to the 'shiny floor'. I sighed. Watching (I felt like a stalker) as Gokudera wrote 'stupid cow' on Lambo's dropped horns, the Cervello started talking.

"Guardian of Lightning, please come to the centre. Your opponent has been waiting for two hours."

Already knowing where Levi was, I'd rather watch Tsuna and co.'s reactions. Yamamoto and Ryohei were strangely silent at the back. Yamamoto was staring at the Electric Circuit, and Ryohei was staring at the clouds.

Strange.

A flash of lightning lit up a side of Levi's face, giving him a momentary silhouette before he faded back into the dark because of his Varia cloak. And straight after that, the other Varia members jumped onto the roof of the opposite entrance, adding yet another ominous sign to the battle.

Ha… I snickered. The Varia sure knows how to make an entrance.

And there he was, Rivincita Jared, looking… straight at me? I immediately looked down, staring at my group of friends.

"Okay, Sawada!" Ryohei dragged Tsuna, "Let's do the usual!"

"The usual?" Tsuna asked Ryohei, and even Gokudera couldn't escape this time (he got pulled in before he got a warning) and I stared at them as they did their support circle… thing.

"Put some spirit into it! Lambo, FIGHT!" Ryohei practically roared (with everyone adding a voice or two), and I winced even on the rooftop.

"Gyahaha! That was fun! One more time!" Lambo asked excitedly.

"We won't!" Tsuna exclaimed.

"Tsuna, stingy, stingy." Lambo turned around the other way, obviously annoyed.

"Hey, sempai!" Yamamoto said, clapping Ryohei on the shoulder. "Don't you feel like something is watching us? I felt that last night too."

"Eh? Really? I was so excited yesterday I couldn't think!"

Yamamoto looked around, and just then lightning flashed behind me, me being a scary looking shaped lump on the top of the roof.

"Ah! What was that?"

They looked up… and saw me. I sighed. Busted.

"Alice! Were you there all this time?"

"…Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because."

Tsuna sighed, probably classing it as me being strange yet again. I didn't bother to move; I had premium seating here.

Reborn looked at me speculatively, before looking back at Lambo.

"He doesn't even understand what's going on."

I shifted, jumping down towards them.

"Say hello to both Lambos for me. Okay?" I smiled at Tsuna, and opened the door. With Reborn looking at me like that, I don't think I could calmly watch the fight. I guess I'll inwardly cheer for him instead. "And after the fight, I've arranged a car. You can bring Lambo on that."

And I walked away, fingering the Star Ring in my pocket with apprehension.

I had this weird feeling that wouldn't go away, telling me to just join and get it over with.

But of course that can't happen.

…Right?

I shook my head violently. Of course I couldn't! What was I faltering again for?

Sighing, I passed a confused looking Iemitsu (who smiled at me) and Basil, (who bowed). I waved back, and continued going down the stairs, texting Grey to get a fast car to wait at the Nami-chu entrance.

Lambo would need urgent operation after all. I'll limit my help to this much.

_Sorry, Lambo…_

* * *

I'd skipped school the next day, preferring to train my head off.

_Left foot step forward, right to the side, hold one chopstick forward and lunge…_

I _knew_ was was wavering, I _knew_ I was getting attached. All the Brighteyes I've known have told me this repeatedly, drumming this into my mind more than once.

_You don't belong here...befriend them but don't get too close…they are just a mission…remember that you're going to leave soon…getting close means that both parties will get hurt…_

I growled, stabbing the chopstick into the dummy in front of me with too much force. I knew all that, damn it, why was my brain deciding to spout all these now of all times? Was it a sign that I should back off?

Sitting down and leaning against a wall, I sighed.

Why the heck was I thinking about this anyway?

* * *

Gokudera's fight, I was staying in tune through an audio transmitter. Though it was rather far away, it was of good quality. Just a bit of annoying _tchhh_ sounds here and there. I was staying comfortable in my own bed, with the lights out so Grey wouldn't tut me because I was staying up late.

"_Tchhh-Gokudera, be careful!" _Tsuna's panicked voice came from the transmitter, and I closed my eyes and imagined what was happening. _"The-tchhh-trick was that wire-tchhh-"_

I nearly fell asleep, until the happy shouts of Tsuna came.

"_I wanted to see the fireworks, Juudaime…" _Gokudera's voice barely filtered through the earpiece. I smiled to myself, really burrowing into my blankets this time with the intent to sleep. I kept the earpiece on, however, and the sounds of them celebrating at Gokudera coming back made me smile.

That was, until these words came next.

"_We will now announce tomorrow's match."_

I could see Tsuna's worried reaction even so far away. "_tchhh-should we do? Reborn? What if it's the Star or Mist or Cloud match?"_

"_Don't-tchhh-everything's falling into place."_

Into place?

"_Just because-tchhh-say that!"_

The Cervello's voice seemed fainter than normal. Or maybe it was just my ears.

I dearly hope it was just my ears. Because I did _not_ just hear that.

"_Tomorrow's match will be Star, the match between the Guardians of the Star."_

"_Ah! It's just as I predicted!" _Tsuna yelled through the thing already panicking. "_What should we do, Reborn? Alice is still refusing, isn't she?"_

"_Remember, Sawada Tsunayoshi, because you have already lost three Rings that if you lose your fourth then the spot for Vongola Tenth will automatically go to Xanxus."_

"_Hiie!"_

Immediately from that, my brain started spouting the reasons why I shouldn't join. _You don't belong here...befriend them but don't get too close…they are just a mission…remember that you're going to leave soon…getting close means that both parties will get hurt… _They repeated like a mantra, over and over and over again.

I'd never done something like this before. For the first time, I wished I hadn't chosen Katekyo. Maybe prancing around with faeries really would be preferable to this. I pulled the blankets over my head, praying that I didn't just hear that.

Because what was I supposed to do now?

* * *

_**Extra: The Day that Reborn tried to Force Tsuna (and co.) into the Disciplinary Committee**_

_Reborn smirked and looked at the Tsuna's family _

_All the members all lined up in front of him. All… except two. He knew Chrome couldn't come, but they seriously have to get more connections to him. The only ones that Hibari even tolerated right now were Yamamoto and Alice! He had to do something about this…_

_Hmm… Reborn stroked Leon as he thought._

"_Err, Reborn?" Dame-Tsuna asked, "why are we all lined up like military fashion…?"_

"_Haha, you're as interesting as always, kid! He has his reasons, doesn't he Tsuna?"_

"_Don't touch Juudaime!"_

"_I have EXTREME training to do, Master Pao Pao! What do you want me to do?"_

"_Sigh…" The Brighteye yawned before slouching again, putting her hands in her pockets._

_Reborn frowned at his student's disorganised family. He'll correct that later (since he well knew that the family's strong point was because they were… disorganised)._

"_You are all going to try establishing relations with Hibari. Him being part of the family, he needs to be closer."_

_Reborn smirked when the Rain Guardian spoke up right after him. "Haha, get him more involved in the team, right? That's a good idea, kid!"_

"_Y-Yamamoto?" His student was staring at him unsurely. "This is _Hibari. _Would he even want to, t-to become friendlier with us?"_

"_Sorry, if you're talking about joining the Disciplinary Committee, I'm out! I'm EXTREMELY involved in my boxing already!"_

"_Sasagawa, no-one said anything about joining the Disciplinary Committee." The Brighteye interjected._

"_No, that's a good idea." Reborn said, impressed that the usual dense boxing nut actually read his plan before saying it out. "We'll do that. You can go."_

"_Thank you, Master Pao Pao!" Ryohei bowed and ran out of the room, doing boxing moves as he did so. _

"_Count me out."_

_The Brighteye tried to sidle away like usual, but Reborn wasn't allowing it this time. Oh no, she was coming this time…_

* * *

_What was this?_

_We were going one by one, Gokudera, Tsuna and I anyway. Yamamoto said something about being in the Baseball club prohibits him from joining the Disciplinary Committee so he got away scot free like Ryohei._

_Lucky._

_Gokudera went in first, and started yelling two seconds later. Tsuna the rushed in, and he pulled back Gokudera practically screaming madly about something like 'Juudaime is the only one I will follow!' while brandishing dynamite. _

_Since Gokudera failed and Tsuna was still holding him back, I stepped through the door of doom next, trying to convince myself that Reborn's gun was waiting for me if I didn't at least try._

_First thing I noticed was the gentle background music… gentle background music that sounded suspiciously like our school song._

_Second was the cold look Hibari was looking me, the third the pompadours that everyone standing around sported. …If I joined, did it mean I had to get a pompadour too?_

_An image of me with a grey pompadour walking around, clenching a piece of grass between my teeth made me nearly gag._

_Oh heck no._

_I swiftly turned the other way and left the room. Tsuna was left standing there, Gokudera left somewhere._

"_A-Alice?"_

"_No way am I joining." I growled, before stalking down the corridor much reminiscent of a certain Disciplinary member._

"_Hiie! Why am I always the only one left?" I practically heard Tsuna sob as he opened the door to his fate._

_I shook my head sadly. No way was I going back even for you, Tsuna…_

* * *

**And there you go. A chapter for you, 7000 words (and I typed it in two days. XD) and read over three times by myself. Typos? Your opinion?**

**Because now that the plot's is getting more thick, I'm extra nervous. O_O What if I mess up? Gaah, I'm getting too nervous. Relaaaaax...**

**Please review! Your reviews inspire me, and encourage me to write more. I actually was tempted to cut this short, but a review from ReaderWorm101 made me think twice. All of you are telling how awesome it is and stuff, and now I actually have ambition to keep it that way. So if I disappointed you... sorry. (Alice all angsty makes me think she's Mary-sue sometimes though, do you get me? Or is it just me being a picky writer? Oh well, I still love you Alice.)**


	22. For the sake of the future

**Why a fortnight? School. XD It has been the end of holidays! **

**But anyway; you know the drill. I love your reviews. My sister has come back, who will hopefully get some grammar mistakes out of the way but who knows, she is so out of it from jetlag and hanging out with friends (unlike me. Haha).**

**Well, please enjoy. I MADE SURE to get it over 7000. And there are some pretty nifty foreshadowing in here ****for**** yet another few huge plot twists that will come into play later. See if you can catch them!**

* * *

The next day I needed to think. So I told the receptionist downstairs to allow _no-one _except Grey and me into the apartment. Tsuna and the others would probably be stopped by him. And for the extremists like Reborn and Gokudera (and Dying Will Tsuna), I told Grey to let no-one in.

I mean, Grey was an ex-Hitman after all... He should be able to handle them, right?

And so I shut myself in my room and thought.

Plopping myself onto the bed, I closed the curtains and just sat there.

What should I do?

Even after thinking for a while, I really didn't know. Both ways, if I joined or didn't join, would change the plot drastically. If I didn't join, Xanxus would become boss. And that should _never_ happen. But if I joined, I would be screwing with the plot anyway, with me in the supposedly _non-existent _eighth Guardian spot.

Consequences. Actions lead to consequences.

What are the consequences?

Joining Tsuna. Or not joining Tsuna.

Not joining Tsuna would mean Xanxus would become boss… But if that happened, we might have a battle that would let Tsuna take the rings back. And if it did, maybe all would stay on course after all that happens, and I would still _not_ be Star Guardian.

Hopefully.

The other one was that I join as Tsuna's Guardian. As appealing as it was, if I joined I might win the thing, become Guardian, become the eighth Guardian that shouldn't be there, maybe be expected to contribute to battles (_absolutely not – aside from the plot I would probably die... figuratively of course)_, and the plot would definitely change. But this would be the more secure solution, in terms of plot.

In the middle of another headache (maybe I should get some painkillers or something), my eyes slid to the journal on my desk. The one that the future I-pin gave me...

* * *

"_Reborn!" Tsuna exclaimed, looking around nervously, "Are you sure Alice will see us?"_

"_Dame-Tsuna, stop twitching like that. No-one would believe you to be a candidate for Vongola Tenth."_

"_I don't want them to!" He practically cried. Stress was catching up to him, Alice wasn't answering to any calls, Gokudera was totally for throwing dynamite around the place even with his injuries, Yamamoto was laughing, __he couldn't connect to Alice's phone, __he _still_ didn't know who his Mist guardian was, Hibari ha__d__ come back, and did he mention Alice was ignoring them? Her match was today!_

_Reborn frowned at his student's behaviour. It should've been obvious what he was going to do. "You will just have to persuade her."_

"_Me?" He stuttered. "Why me?"_

"_You're her boss, aren't you? Go." Reborn raised his Leon-gun threateningly, and Tsuna hightailed his way through the rich people crowds and towards the receptionist._

_Was __the receptionist__ sniffing at him disdainfully again...?_

* * *

Should I read it? Or shouldn't I? I stared at the journal, then padded over and picked it up. It was worn, the cover a bit old. Actually, it looked really old, scars marring its face, but maybe it went through some hard usage. The cover was soft leather, but from the look of it, it was soft only because it was nearly worn through.

Should I?

I took a deep breath, and opened it.

_[My Journal-thing. Chrome's birthday gift for my 18__th__ birthday, and well, why not use it?]_

I frowned. Eighteenth? Then why was it so old?

Wait. Eighteenth.

I died when I was sixteen, didn't I? Then, what was this? I puzzled over it for a while until I remembered Liza's words to me on the first day I came here. Something about two year extensions.

It'll come when it'll come. I had other things I needed. I flipped through, not really reading it but scanning the book for anything related to me being the Star Guardian. After a few minutes of scanning and flipping, there it was, on the seventeenth page, a tiny thing really. Nearly missed it, it being tiny writing in the margin.

_[Being Tsuna's Star Guardian sure is hard... Maybe I should've just refused it in the first place. But of course I can't, because who would protect him from the weird changes that have been happening?]_

I blinked, suddenly feeling foolish for worrying so much. Well that sealed it. I was to become Tsuna's Star Guardian.

But why would I choose that? What my future self wrote in there seemed to imply some changes in the future. Better stick to it. After all, it's not good to angst over stuff like this... If I was so worked up over this, what would I do in the _future? _

Ha, a pun. In the future, and Ten Years future. I grinned to myself, a first real grin since I started questioning if I should join or not. The journal did its magic. No use agonising. Where was my usual composure? I need to be cool-headed.

I slapped my cheeks. Get a grip on yourself, I told my reflection in the dark glass. Nodding to myself, I flipped through the rest of the book, mostly disinterested in the things that were written there. Just for curiosity. Until it came to a series of strange marks on the page. And different handwriting. Newer pen marks.

_{I was confused as to why it was so old. I mean two year extension? Hello? My future self got it on her eighteenth, which meant only a few months of living. It should still be new. That's why I'm writing this message, because I have a very vague suspicion. And I'm writing one mark under this message. If this is the first time I/You/Future you is reading this, please put a mark under this. If this is your second and over, please don't.}_

A below this was an army of little blue lines, all weaving down the page.

This was the third time I've ever touched this journal from the future. The first time when I was getting it from I-pin, the second when I moved it in my computer room, and then to my room. The third was this, to check if I was going to be Star Guardian or not.

So why were there all these marks? There were more than sixty, at least. How could I have made these marks on the journal? Creepiest thing was that the pen next to my hand right now looked like it would match the ink of those marks...

I picked up a pen, pulled off the cap and put one more mark next to the sixty or so marks.

It matched. Perfectly.

All pen ink is different; the obvious ones are different brands anyway. SPTN Three told me that straight off. I shrugged, probably coincidence. I didn't usually buy different brands of pens…

Then I realised that all the pens on my desk, whether it was red, blue, black, even _purple,_ was a different brand from the one in my hand. Every single one of the pens on my desk was different. I laughed disbelievingly, put down the pen and took out another.

Yup, different brand. I clicked the pen and wrote on another piece of paper and flicked back a page on the journal.

That pen ink matched the usual brand of pens I bought.

I flipped over the page again, to the darker shade of ink. And remembered.

I had borrowed this pen from Kyoko a few weeks ago, but never really returned it. So about five days before I put it on my desk for me to remember to give it back, plan foiled for so long because I never really used my desk.

Paling and not really wanting to think about what those marks really meant, I closed the journal and put it as far back into my wardrobe as I could. My problem was solved; I didn't have to think about it anymore.

Not now.

I had a battle prepare for, after all.

* * *

_It was dark already, and Tsuna couldn't reach Alice even when he went into Dying Will… People wouldn't think a twenty-seven story tower would be hard to scale up compared to a cliff, but it was very much so. The rich people staring out of their apartment windows from the fifteenth floor as he flashed his boxers in broad daylight was also a bit disconcerting, of course._

_Reborn didn't think so. When he dragged himself from the hotel lobby (kicked out; he apparently violated the dress code too much), he promptly told him that he had to have more training._

_Gokudera had been forced back into hospital (with a plea from him. He stayed after that, thank goodness), and Yamamoto had tried his hands on contacting her as well. He was, after all, quite close to Alice._

_But nothing worked, and Reborn refused to do anything about it._

_Tsuna twitched and fidgeted in front of the school, his hand fingering Lambo's tail from his cow-suit in his pocket. He had to stop Xanxus from doing more things like that anymore._

"_Yo, Tsuna!" Yamamoto said cheerfully, jogging up. He stared at him disbelievingly, jerked from his reverie. How could he be so _happy_ all the time?_

"_Ju-Juudaime!" Gokudera hopped/shuffled/dragged himself forward. Tsuna stared at the mummified Gokudera, followed by a Ryohei who was stabilising him._

"_Gokudera-kun!" Tsuna replied, surprised he could even be surprised. "W-what happened to you?"_

_Ryohei replied this one, laughing loudly. "That Romario guy wrapped him up like this when he kept taking off his bandages!"_

"_Shut up, lawn head!" Gokudera shot at him, trying to go forward without his help only to fall flat on his face. Tsuna rushed to help and started unrolling the bandages off him. Yamamoto came up behind him to help._

"_Tsuna," Yamamoto asked seriously during a lull in Gokudera's ranting, "Did you get to see Alice?"_

_All of them stopped talking to listen to him. Tsuna swallowed, and shook his head. "No, I couldn't get to her at all."_

"_Stupid freaky eyes," Gokudera muttered, "worrying Juudaime!"_

"_It's fine," Tsuna rushed to assure, though he wasn't totally sure himself, "we'll figure something out."_

"_Dame-Tsuna." A voice squeaked out from the left, and Tsuna automatically tried to dodge… but failed. His head flew sideways yet again, and Reborn landed on Yamamoto's shoulder. Yamamoto just laughed, and straightened a bit so he could sit easier. "No-one but Alice is able to be your Star Guardian."_

_Tsuna was just about to reply when the Cervello jumped onto the roof of the school entrance._

"_This time the battle is at the pool." And strangely without another word, they jumped away. They slowly trudged there, Tsuna having an impending sense of doom with every step, half-tuning out Gokudera's rants about how unreliable Alice was. _

"_I mean, how could she just refuse the position anyway? The Vongola are the best! And still, making Juudaime worry needlessly, and with such an important thing about the Rings! And her battle is the deciding one… I'm sorry__,__ Juudaime," Gokudera suddenly faced him, "If I had won, then you wouldn't be worrying so much about her…"_

_Tsuna barely saw his dejected expression in the dark, and although feeling dejected himself he tried to comfort him._

"_No, Gokudera…"_

_They rounded the corner, Tsuna first, then Gokudera, Yamamoto and Ryohei._

_The pool was there, __but __the liquid looked strange, unlike the water it usually held. What looked like stripes were stretched across the pool on metal poles that were about half a meter higher than the pool, like a web of white lines covering the fifty metre long pool. The Varia was standing on the other side, inside a clear box of some kind. Their Star Guardian candidate was standing outside __that box__, __but__ inside the pool boundaries with his hood drawn up._

_Alice was no-where to be seen. Tsuna's hopes flagged, somehow thinking that somehow Alice would be there waiting for him._

"_I heard you, Gokudera." A soft dry voice came from above. Everyone's faces which had been filled with disappointment turned shocked. Then grins suddenly appearing on all his Guardian's faces, even Gokudera (though he covered it fast). He felt his own face stretching to accommodate the huge smile he had, somehow feeling confidence just from __hearing __her voice._

_Alice was sitting there, just above them, her legs dangling._

_Tsuna just grinned up, feeling foolish for even doubting her. She had always been trustworthy, the one that had always been there. _

_Just looking up at her made him feel relaxed. It was a strange feeling, but nonetheless, she was _there.

_She hopped down, before just slowly meandering her way towards the pool, and they all went to the empty white box under the eyes of the Cervello. With her there…_

_The battle could begin. He squeezed his eyes shut._

_Good luck._

* * *

The Cervello were there, just outside the pool barrier. It was glaringly bright, with lights set up all around the area. I squinted at them, and they just stood there until I reached my designated place opposite Rivincita Jared. We looked at each other, before simultaneously looking back to the Cervello. One of them stood forward, but didn't talk to us.

"Please pick up those glasses on the tables," the other told Tsuna and Xanxus. Tsuna looked around comically until he spotted a table of weird glasses on a little table inside the white boxes drawn on the ground.

All of them picked up one, and Reborn even stopped smirking triumphantly for a moment to pick up a pair. I narrowed my eyes at them. They looked like…night vision goggles. But why would they need them here? The lights were so bright it was crazy.

After all of them put a pair on, something that looked like glass suddenly closed in around them. Tsuna probably did a 'hiie' in surprise, but I couldn't hear him.

"The glass is soundproof," she said, and somehow Tsuna and the others heard and started adjusting their glasses. There was probably an audio device in them for them to hear what was happening. I turned my attention back to the Cervello.

They both walked towards us, verified our Rings before slipping them on chains and giving it to us to slip onto our necks. We did so and I eyed Jared's Ring, gleaming silver in his cloak's dark brown folds.

"The rules of the Star Guardian battle are simple. Acquire the Ring from the other's neck and connect them. To be the Star that watches and knows all, to scout ahead and show the Family the way; that is the role of the Guardian of the Star. So we have set up this terrain."

She waved a hand over the pool and the strange white pieces of cloth over it. It seemed sturdy enough, but what was that liquid? It certainly wasn't water. The other Cervello stepped forward this time, her face blank.

"We have replaced the water with an acid of pH one point five. If it even touches you, it will burn. The battle will take place on the special type of cloth we have developed specially for this. They will not collapse under you. Please step onto one of them." I stepped forward, as did the cloaked figure opposite me. We both chose a white strip to stand on, climbing up stairs to reach it. It was wide enough to be stable; I could walk on it normally if I was careful and didn't mind the acid that was under me. The strips were elevated; about one and a half metres between the cloth and acid.

She nodded, and stepped back. The other stepped forward once again. "If you land in the acid, you will die. There is a twenty minute time limit. Please remember the set up of the pieces of cloth." I immediately looked around, noting the big holes and where the cloth intersected for a wider foothold. They would say that for a reason, right?

I was busily setting the pool to memory when they said their next sentence.

"Because you will be conducting your battle in the dark."

And suddenly all the bright lights shut off.

* * *

The cloth seemed much more unstable, and my eyes from the shock of going from bright light to total darkness left bright stripes on my retina – the afterimage of the white cloth lingering. I desperately tried to remember them, but trying to balance on the piece of cloth seemed so much harder now it was dark.

This situation made remember what I did in primary once, when a teacher told us all to stand up in PE once. We all did of course, with grumbles of protest. The teacher then told us to balance on our right foot, and we all did so. Then she told us to put our left against our right to make a triangle, close our eyes and stay balanced as long as possible.

Most of the people fell within the minute.

It was like that now, me trying to desperately balance on something that seemed so easy with sight. I could practically feel the cloth trembling, and I spread my arms out in an attempt to stabilise. After a few tense moments of teetering over and trying not to think about landing in the acid, I stabilised and slowly lowered my arms and reached for my guns.

I had barely gotten both out when I felt another weight go on my strip of cloth. I strained my hearing over the usual noises, wind whistling through rustling leaves, the acid beneath me lapping at the walls of the pool with small lapping sounds, the breathing of the Cervello and… a person in front of me, and getting nearer.

I tried to jump back, just for my back to hit a wall where there had been air before. Bumping my arms on it to find out what it was; a wall that was blocking my way out of the pool.

The person in front of me seemed to be running, but then he had been at the opposite side of the fifty metre pool. But people can run fast if they knew where they were going. But where could I escape? I didn't trust myself in the dark, my guns were practically useless without my sight…

Praying my memory was correct, I jumped sideways blind. My feet reached out, expecting to land on cloth… only to meet thin air.

* * *

_Tsuna paled when he heard the word acid. Even he knew what acid could do when it was strong enough. And from Gokudera's reaction he knew it was strong. Very strong._

_He held his breath, suddenly not so sure. Why was she doing this for him? She had been so adamant about not joining, not being his Guardian. But when she came, he was so relieved, so happy. But now he didn't know if he wished for her to come._

_She had stepped onto one of the pieces of cloth, no hesitation at all. He held his breath, but it didn't seem to break under her weight._

"_Because you will be conducting your battle in the dark," one of the Cervello said blankly, her voice filtering through the earpiece connected to the glasses without emotion. And suddenly the lights went dark and he realised what the glasses were for._

_Green lines appeared on the glasses, and he found he could see, to an extent. He saw Alice; he saw the mysterious cloaked figure, he saw the wall that suddenly rose around the pool so they couldn't escape the pool. And the most horrible thing was to see Alice looking around lost until she went and nearly unbalanced._

_Ryohei shouted, but it didn't seem to reach. Everyone only relaxed when she stabilised again, and she reached into her pockets for two guns. He was back to just seeing again._

_He saw her flick the safety off the guns with a small flick, saw the cloaked guy hop onto her piece of cloth and start running towards her. Saw her tense, her head still. Saw her back off, hit the wall, probably feeling the cloaked guy running closer, and jump._

_He was sure, sure that he shouted to be careful, reach out, just another step more. Nearly drowning in the voices around him, all telling her to jump further, he added his voice to the mix._

_But she missed._

* * *

Was I out of the game so soon? I asked myself as my feet touched nothing. I was falling, I could imagine my feet touching the acid already, burning into my skin, melting flesh, the pain. Desperately, I reached out, imploring for something, imploring for the lifeline I had jumped for.

And there it was, I saw with wide eyes. A flash of moonlight before it was hidden behind clouds again, lighting up the pure white cloth for not even a second.

It was enough.

I flung an arm out, and hugged the strip of cloth. It held me up, bounced me up a little and threatening my hold but I held onto it tightly. When it settled, I was blind again, but clinging to the cloth. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to jump out of my chest.

I calmed myself, trying not to take deep gulps of air. As softly as possible. Slowly. And listened.

Where was he?

The breathing noises… were right behind me. I immediately hauled myself up onto the cloth and kneeled, left hand holding onto the gun and holding onto the cloth in hopes it would stop _moving._ The right I held up my other gun and shot.

Once. Twice.

The muted shot noises seemed to ricochet around the walled area, the silence that had prevailed for so long broken. The blur in front of me seemed to shift away from the shots, and then tensed preparing to jump. I immediately stood up, and stepped away as fast as I dared. Something whistled past my ear, and I nearly stumbled in fright.

A cut on my cheek, and something warm trickling down. I continued walking, examining the wound trying to ignore the sting.

This was probably made by a blade… I turned around, and quieted down again. My eyes were adjusting, albeit slowly. He used some type of blade, small enough to be thrown. Short knives, daggers, thin blades. What it could be was numerous.

I opened my eyes and listened carefully. A sudden shift detected by my feet signalled he was there again. But I had the advantage, not being trapped by a wall. About forty metres behind me, and about five for him. I had him trapped.

I raised my gun again, and shot.

Third. Fourth.

He ducked, a fast blur, and lunged at me. I stepped backwards, sideways, and it was just wide enough for me to stand aside as he passed me. He was already wheeling around but I was faster. I cocked my gun.

Fifth. Sixth.

The cowl of the cloak hid his face. But one of the bullets shredded his sleeve, the other seemed to skim his arm. It didn't stop him.

Whipping his arm around, he pushed me backwards, but I had already known there was another piece of cloth behind me and went with the push, turning sideways. I landed shakily and turned around to shoot again, hoping he would be less guarded.

Seventh.

He dodged with unnatural fluidity, right and jumped backwards. I squinted, madly trying to know what he was doing.

The sound of something cutting through air answered me, and I immediately threw myself down and left, a knife aimed for my throat only missing by a few hairs. I started trying to speed walk down the cloth, but knives followed me as I went, forcing me to step back towards him. I turned around and shot yet again, trying to make him at least pause in throwing knives.

Eighth.

My first gun was now useless. I jammed it back into my right holster and swapped the gun from my left hand to my right, slowly edging backwards. He noticed it, somehow, and he jumped with surprising accuracy to his two jumps. The moon peeked out from the thick clouds once again, and I used this chance to jump as well, landing and using the bounce to go to other places along the pool.

The sudden shine on the white cloth hurt my eyes, but I forced myself to remember at least what was in front of me. On my third jump, I thought I was going to land when a knife sliced the cloth through. Immediately throwing my upper body backwards, I managed to cling onto a piece of cloth and tucked my feet in, knowing they would brush acid if not.

The darkness was now illuminated, and I surveyed my battle area.

My back was yet again towards a wall, but it was a better vantage point. About halfway between the fifty mark, and Rivincita was on the opposite side of the pool. There were a few lanes between him and me.

He tensed himself, preparing to follow me yet again. Maybe his specialty was close combat.

I let myself have a tiny smirk.

Mine was too.

He jumped once, and knowing he couldn't dodge in air I shot at him.

One. Two. Three.

He landed safely, my shots somehow deflected to the side. His left arm was moving more awkwardly however, and in the dim lighting that was provided by the moon, his cloak had more holes than I thought. I continued shooting.

Four. Five.

He had nearly reached me by then, so I ran, secure in my footing with the light provided. I shot over my shoulder.

Six. Seven.

He was running too, but I was losing him. Suddenly jumping to the side in an easy jump, I stabilised before turning around and shot my last bullet at him.

Eight.

He suddenly grinned, and launched himself at me faster than before.

"No more bullets now, Brighteye?"

One arm got me on the shoulder, another around the neck and the force had me down, nearly falling into the empty space on either side. It was all due to luck I fell straight.

The moonlight was still strong, but I saw a cloud being blown over to cover it. Another five seconds or so and the moonlight would be gone.

No time. I turned my attention back to him, who had taken his hand off my shoulder and started reaching for the ring around my neck.

"Doesn't matter."

In one quick motion, I had kneed him, caught his chin with my palm in a quick upward motion, reached for the chopsticks in my hair and stabbed at his head.

I missed, and instead it caught into the cowl of his cloak. It fell back.

His face was younger than I expected, and I stared at his face in disbelief. It was familiar.

Only a second, before the moon was covered and all my light disappeared. But that wasn't the problem. His face was familiar. Who was it?

I searched my memory of this world, of significant events, of primary because if he appeared in Nami-chu I would have remembered him immediately.

And then I remembered. A young boy, next to his older brother.

"…Mauve?"

He snarled, before somehow whipping his arm around and nicking my arm. I pulled back, more in shock than anything else.

That scared boy, that overwhelmed, curious, moreover _innocent_ little boy was this, Rivincita Jared? He was my physical age, if I remember correctly. How did he change… how did he change so much?

But he was connected to _that_ person then, right? Because he was an assassin, employed by someone. Therefore he couldn't be the person behind all this. I hardened my gaze, trying to find in the blur in front of me something that told me he really was that 'Mauve' of my memory.

"How's Red?" I asked, walking back carefully. He stiffened, and I knew.

He was Mauve.

I stepped back, feeling the mystery thicken. Why did he join the Varia? He was an assassin, he was probably ordered to by an employer. The question was… who?

Back in primary, he had tried to kill Tsuna. Tsuna had been well hidden, that was why he had been safe for the majority of primary-school. Then why was he found? Assassins Red and Mauve… on the orders of someone who noticed him because of me hanging around Tsuna. So it was someone who noted the movement of the Brighteyes.

Most likely, he was _that_ person I was trying to find.

A person who was tracking the movements of the Brighteyes and trying to jeopardise their missions. That was my conclusion. I needed to talk to the other Brighteyes about this.

Rivincita Jared. If I could beat him, then… maybe I could get vital information.

I steadied myself, and held my chopsticks in front of me.

I'll just have to beat him.

* * *

We were standing on top of pieces of cloth, over a pool of acid, trapped by solid barriers until one of us won. Large gaping holes over the pool dotted the pool because of Mauve, no Jared, cut some of the cloth, our allies were in soundproof boxes so they couldn't help, my opponent was probably stronger than me in combat. It was completely dark, and my opponent somehow seemed to know just wherever he was stepping.

All I could think of, as I analysed the situation, were the disadvantages. What could I do to _win_ this thing?

The Ring.

I didn't have to beat him. I just needed the Ring.

That meant close combat.

I ran forward without thinking, knowing he was right in front of me. I shot a punch, he blocked it and raised a leg preparing to kick. Twisting my chopsticks in my other hand, I stopped his leg with a well-aimed jab to his knee.

It was a blur of movement. He was faster, I was more accurate. More often than not, I relied on my reflexes to dodge a potentially fatal elbow or knife.

I finished with a blow to the ribs, driving the side of my hand in between two ribs. He winced, and lost his balance, but he wrapped his legs around the cloth and used the force of his fall to swing back up, getting me in a hit to my ear.

Retreating fast, I went backwards a few steps and nursed my ringing ear. He was examining his ribs, and it was another few seconds later that we looked at each other again.

Tensing, I prepared to run towards him but he reacted first. He jumped, but not before slicing the cloth that we were both on. The cloth immediately went limp, falling toward the middle of the pool, and I tried to find purchase. I couldn't jump, but…

I twisted my chopsticks around the cloth, thanking my lucky stars that I was near the edge of the pool. I hung there, for two seconds, before my back hit the pool wall with a wet _thump. _I grimaced, feeling the acid burn up the cloth and produce some type of gas.

Probably not good for me.

I held my chopsticks horizontally, getting a good grip on the satiny fabric and started swinging towards the nearest piece of cloth. I swung my legs, trying to reach.

Back. Forth, back then forward again. I swung against the side of the pool, and squinted, nearly there! I risked letting go of one side of my make-shift hand hold, stretching my arm out so that I could grab hold of the line of grey that promised me a margin more safety.

The moonlight came out again, and it caught the gleam of the blade that cut the path of white, and I swung back, staring at the length of cloth that had been my salvation. I looked to the other side, and found it was too far away.

Hauling myself up, trying to get as far away from the acid as possible, I tried to see if there was at least a small ledge where I could rest, sit, anything.

None. Except for a small gap that would fit about the tips of my fingers.

I set my mouth in a grim line, knowing what I needed to do next. If I didn't, wasn't I just a sitting duck ripe for picking?

Let the duck fly away with its feathers.

I dodged a knife aimed at me by twisting away, then winding the fabric around my wrist and sticking my chopsticks into a real pocket as I started doing something that was probably suicidal.

Using my fingertips, I edged towards my left with my back clearly facing the enemy.

My fingers immediately tried to give, not used to supporting my whole weight. I gritted my teeth, and tortured my fingers even more as I shuffled along the ledge trying to get to that far away cloth, my feet tucked as high up as they would go. The acid was lapping down below, only twenty centimetres and I would…

I shuffled, my face sweating and arms shaking, my shirt being clung to by some type of gel on the wall making it harder to move damn forward –

Gel?

My fingers were burning, they were slipping, but I stopped and stared, willing my fingers to not give away. Why was there _gel?_

Twenty minute time limit. About eight had passed, but there was a significant difference, when I looked down, in the amount of gel that was applied. The gel was, I thought as I continued at my snail's pace, was thicker in places where there were no acid.

No acid. Acid eats away things.

Why wouldn't the acid eat away the pool?

Because of this.

Sweat was tricking into my eyes as I finally reached the place that was under the stretched piece of cloth. I was reaching up to haul myself up onto the thing, when I had a thought.

Risking two seconds, I scooped up as much gel as possible with my left hand as my right was still clinging onto the stupidly small ledge. Then I reached up, got my feet onto the ledge for a moment and _pushed_, my feet having purchase for only half a second before slipping, but enough to let me jump and reach up, hanging by my aching arms.

I swung, up and over, landing on the cloth again. The gel I had accumulated gleaming on the cloth I was standing on.

Safe.

I gathered up as much gel as I could, ignoring my fingertips and knowing they would definitely be bruised tomorrow.

If I couldn't win in skill, strength, or memory, then I would have to win by intelligence.

I'll turn the situation to _my_ advantage.

I grinned at the gel in my hands, knowing I had my trump card.

* * *

_Tsuna had his heart in his mouth, sweat in his eyes, nerves too much to handle._

_All the people around him were silent for once, as they watched Alice struggle against the cloaked Varia Star Guardian. They didn't seem talk much, unlike their other battles. They just moved, and reacted._

_And that somehow made it all the scarier. Tsuna wanted to squeeze his eyes shut, but he found he couldn't._

_They watched with bated breath as Alice edged across on her fingertips, and he inwardly cheered her on._

"_Isn't it weird that the Jared guy isn't shooting at her?"_

_Tsuna jumped at Gokudera's voice, it had been so silent before. He looked at Alice's opponent, who he hadn't really been paying attention to because he was so wound up about her situation. It was indeed strange._

"_Maybe it was her eyes." Yamamoto said, having a sudden realisation. "I took off my glasses for a second to rub my eyes and I think I saw yellow. Her eyes were giving her away."_

"_So when she turned against the wall he couldn't track her?" Tsuna asked, voice trembling._

"_Yeah."_

"_Heh," Gokudera sniffed, "she should be more careful."_

_He knew it was how Gokudera showed he cared, and turned to stare at Alice again. She had gotten her footing, and everyone in the box relaxed slightly. She was rubbing something on her hands, and Tsuna leaned forward in concern, hitting his head on the wall in the process. Did she get something on them?_

_She had been overwhelmed since the start, him on the constant attack. _

_But Alice wouldn't lose, right?_

_The Jared guy had come up, his hood down and running towards her. Alice was in her ready position, dodging his first attack, giving a punch and failing, then he hit her side. She teetered, and suddenly the whole cloth rippled. He was stamping on the cloth, he himself sure footed._

_And she was falling, and Tsuna opened his mouth in a soundless scream._

* * *

He was running this way again, and although I was confused as to why he hadn't aimed at me when I was trying to get solid footing, I let it go as luck.

I settled down in a ready position, my eyes narrowing. The thin layer on both my hands would probably last thirty seconds, and that was maximum. But that was enough.

He reached me and his arm shot out with a flash of steel – thicker and stronger than the ones that he had thrown at me before. I twisted and feigned a punch to his stomach, not really touching him. He dodged my slow attack, before aiming at my side. He hit me this time, and me eyes widened as I teetered off the edge, slightly winded.

Then he stamped on the cloth, and it rippled under him, under _us._

_And I was suddenly falling…_

* * *

**Extra: A little story of a cow lost in a herd of clams**

Once upon a time, on a far off planet, in another dimension, there lived a calf that was born into a field located in dangerous parts. Scary wolves would attack his herd all the time, storms would rip apart the field, rain would ruin the year's good grass.

But of course, the cows in the herd wouldn't let it be. So they learnt weapons and made bazookas and launched them at wolves, invented a roof, had fake sun installed.

Then one day, a dangerous math robot called Boreen came and told them that he was a representative from the dangerous Vongola Clams and they were going to take over their field. Of course that couldn't happen, so the elders of the cow herd gathered together.

"Oh no!" One mooed out in sadness, "we must make a sacrifice!"

Although there had been no mention of sacrifice until then, the cows all nodded and agreed.

"Yes, a sacrifice must be made." One mooed.

"Yes, let's send out little Lambo." A second mooed.

"Yes, lets. Let's even give him a bazooka." A third mooed.

"Yes, yes. He will be honoured to get a treasure." The last mooed, its eyes more brainless than the others.

So without even giving consent, little Lambo was sent out to the herd of Vongola Clams. And without anywhere to go, he went to the land of the C.L.A.M.S, Vongola for short. He fought through dangerous plants, trudged through desert, swam through lakes in an epic adventure.

On his journey, he had thought a bit about how to escape his fate of being sacrifice to the infamous scary Clams of the area. And he hit upon a great idea! Why not just kill the evil math robot?

So he cheerfully toted his bazooka into the clam field, located the math robot teaching what seemed like a boy sitting in a clam, and shot at him.

Unfortunately, he was nearly knocked out cold by his own weapon.

He had forgotten to note evil math robots were strong. Especially if they were credited as the strongest math robot in the universal math confederation.

So he wandered around, feeling the lump in his head with teary eyes. And he was surprised when a clam stopped in front of him (previously they had all ignored his small self), and asked if he was okay. Noting it was the boy/clam that the evil math robot had been teaching, he tried to kill him too.

Plan was foiled by a were-cat called Gokudera, who looked like he had a silver octopus over his head and holding dynamite.

"Juudaime!"

That ended the first day Lambo landed into the land of C.L.A.M.S.

* * *

Every day he tried to kill the math robot Boreen, every day he failed. He had become so common to the math robot's student house that his mother had come to give his snacks, the student in question play games with him, the nice swallow that played baseball once even let him hold his bat. A weird girl with eagle eyes stared at him for the first few times he went there scared him, but he realised she wasn't that scary after all, after she didn't tell that he was the one who stole the cookie from the cookie jar. She always watched over Tsuna the Clam. Next to her was the _really _scary skylark; now he was the really scary one.

And there was the issue with his new friend, the garlic bun.

He had accidently tried to bite it, only for a spew of garlic fumes to come out with a muttered squeak of –broccoli monster! Gyoza-ken! –. Then he realised that there had been, in fact, a tiny girl inside the bun who had been training.

Although a bit miffed he had been trumped by a girl smaller than his horn, they became friends.

* * *

He started living in the house, and Tsuna (who had been the nice student who never yelled at him) didn't protest except for a sigh and 'another freeloader'. Guessing the other two were I-pin the garlic bun girl, Bianchi the scorpion, he sent a smile and demanded more gratin.

He never had gratin in the field before. Strangely, he said as he munched through his gratin that Mama had giving him, he felt more at home in the land of clams than the land of cows.

He even stopped trying to kill the evil math robot, who apparently wasn't Boreen but Reborn.

* * *

No-good Clam was what they called Tsuna, but he didn't think so when he flew out of his shell for the first time to protect him and the others. His eyes were still warm, but so cold towards his opponents.

He defeated them so fast. The kangaroo next to him was jumping up and down in joy after their win, and the were-cat was running up to Tsuna, who for a second, looked like a lion with its intense pride and regal posture.

Then he was in front of him, picking him up and I-pin in his hair, saying that they were too young to be here.

He smiled, said something annoying, but loved it.

At least here, he knew he wouldn't be sent off as another sacrifice.

* * *

**Now, there's a cliff hanger for you to chew on. Let's see if I can update next week, shall we? I have camp after all. But I type pretty quick XD**

**Now, I'm afraid talking too much will let me slip something about the plot, so bye! Review! Love all your support, makes my day, **_**really.**_


	23. Extra: I love you

**I have not broken the cliffie… actually, this isn't a real a chapter at all. These are scenes from a prospective future. Just say it's a gift from an author that has problems with typing a future arc twist. I just felt guilty for not updating that I put this out. I hope this satisfies your romance lovers. Remember I'm not that experienced with fluff... please tell me what I can do better!**

**Warning: emo-fluff. This chapter highly recommended with a sad song to listen to. **

**XD Reviewers, awesome! I hope you do so for this chapter too, because well, I want to know what your reaction is. No note at the end this time. My sister as well, thank you! Now please enjoy and start the sad music.**

* * *

"_This is a solo mission, Alice. You have to __be __extra careful with this," Tsuna said, shifting through his papers and looking __seriously __at the person standing in front of his desk. She was just standing there, chopsticks in her hair, hands in pockets. He smiled fondly; she never changed._

"_Got it, Tsuna. You always worry. It's fine." _

_Tsuna smiled at his sleepy-eyed Star Guardian._

"_I still have to brief you on what you should be careful of." _

"_You say the same thing all the time. And you don't think I didn't do my own research?" she said, waving off his comments slowly. Thinking about it, she did everything slowly these days… A stab of fear went through his body. He knew enough to know __that __this was his intuition by now._

_Was the mission going to be dangerous? He __couldn't__ bear to have another case like two years ago. She had nearly died then, he wouldn't be able to handle her nearly dying again…_

_Looking at the mission details, no intuition came to warn him of something dangerous. Then what…_

_His thought was interrupted by her, her smiling and turning around. _

"_Bye, Tsuna. Going to get ready now."_

"_Okay… Are you okay?" _

_Alice had stumbled over a small chair, very unlike herself. "Oh no, Tsuna, I'm fine." She smiled again. "I think I need glasses."_

"_Maybe I shouldn't send you to this mission after all__;__ you've seemed off __since __the mission on your birthday…" Tsuna fretted. Alice smiled._

"_No, it's fine."_

_Tsuna was reassured by her smile, but his intuition stabbed him again when he looked at her. Were her eyes a bit unfocused? But he knew not to ask, she wouldn't tell him. Maybe he could ask Shamal to look over her later. It shouldn't be anything big._

_A soft click seemed to echo around the room as the door shut smoothly behind her. Tsuna sighed, and turned around to look out the huge window behind him. There__, before him,__ lay the huge grounds of the Vongola mansion. Being eighteen and a boss, it was hard._

_He could only do this with the support of his Guardians. If he ever nearly lost one of them again, if he was to face that blank terror…_

_He wouldn't know what to do. _

* * *

"_Hey, you look off, freaky-eyes."_

"_Huh?" Alice looked up at Gokudera. He frowned at her, barely concealed worry behind his mask of irritated scowl. He thought something was up; she had been acting a bit strange ever since her eighteenth birthday. _

_Family was family for a reason. They told each other things for support__,__ but some you just can't say aloud. Gokudera knew this all too well, so he didn't push. __It__ didn't stop him from worrying__, however__._

_Freaky-eyes was an important part of the family._

"_If you're tired, go to sleep. We still have a fortnight to go over these documents after all."_

"_Oh no, I'm fine." Alice sat up, rubbing her eyes. "It's just that I think my eye sight is worsening from staring at these things," she waved the pieces of paper around, "all day long."_

_Gokudera suppressed a smile at her joke and adjusted his own glasses._

_He knew she was smarter than to suppress __important __information. She was fine if she could still joke. She didn't joke much, but when she did, it was to indicate to them that she was fine. If she joked, it meant that she was telling them not to worry._

_So he stopped worrying._

* * *

_The girls had dressed Alice up for the party, and Liza had sent her special contacts that still had the presence thing__,__ only in deep blue. Deep blue, after all, was a more common colour than yellow. A long black haired wig was put on her head, and Alice stroked it a bit sadly, knowing her own hair would never be so beautiful._

_Haru did her make-up, the girl not unexpectedly good at make-up and such arts, removing her face and painting it back on, and suddenly a face that wasn't hers stared back. Kyoko stepped forward then, and did her hair with sad eyes, pulling it up into an elegant __knot, two-thirds of the hair twined around in a design that Alice could never hope to achieve on her own, leaving the rest to flow from the knot down across one shoulder. As a finishing touch, Kyoko curled the ends of the rope of trailing hair, adding yet more class to an already beautiful hairstyle._

_Alice stared at her reflection, knowing it wasn't hers. It was too beautiful, the eyes too deep and meaningful, skin __with__ a blush she could never physically obtain, the face too perfect. They had did this for her, as well as buying her a dress for the occasion._

"_Guys," she croaked out, and her voice coming from the creature from the mirror seemed wrong. Her eyes wanted to cry but she dared not to._

"_Don't you dare cry," Haru wagged her finger at her. "You'll ruin Haru's beautiful work! It was so easy to work with; you __only__ needed some enhancing."_

_Kyoko stepped gracefully forward, putting an arm on Alice's shoulder. "We know how you're having some troubles," she said gently, stunning in a red and gold dress. On anyone else it would have been too much. On Kyoko, it was a masterpiece. _

_Alice smiled wryly. She knew that even if she was transformed through products it wouldn't last. Not a beauty like hers. Jealousy rose up, only to be mercilessly stamped on._

_She was going to enjoy the evening._

"_Yeah, we all noticed Hibari-san was __being__ mean to you!" Haru exclaimed, combing her own short hair and checking for tangles. Alice jumped. Had they been so obvious? Haru noticed her reaction, and quickly amended her statement. "Well, he ignored you more than normal. And you were acting distant to Tsuna-san."_

_Alice stood up, and Kyoko smiled at her._

"_Mhmm, Alice." Kyoko nodded to the reflection in the mirror, inviting her to look as well, only she didn't want to. "We knew you needed a break. After all, we know the effects of having too much drama in your life." Haru and Kyoko exchanged wry smiles._

"_Even though you're my rival in love, Alice-chan," Haru continued softly, "Girl-power beats all doesn't it? In these types of times, we have to stick together."_

_Kyoko had leaned over, and fixed an offending lock of hair. Winking friendlily, she stepped back, letting go of the black hair with a flourish. "There, all done!"_

_The elegant chopsticks in her hair were not her usual battle-ready ones, but ones with ornaments hanging from the end. Haru smiled, hopping a little with her short hair bobbing attractively around her face._

"_Kyoko-chan! Don't you think Alice looks like another person? Mission accomplished!" _

"_Yeah." Kyoko agreed, smiling too. All three of them were smiling. This moment without romance drama, no frustrating individuals, no ignoring games, no impending disappearances. Just her and her two best, best friends._

_Kyoko held up three masks, choosing the red and gold one for herself. Then she handed a majestic ocean blue and purple one to Haru, who immediately put it on and pulled a face. Next, she gave a silver one to Alice, a shimmering__,__ understated one. She took it gratefully._

"_Let's go." Kyoko said, determined. The impromptu girl-group leader. Alice and Haru hung back, and automatically filed into a line behind her. The door opened to reveal carpeted hallways, rich ornaments... that the two people before her took no note of._

_Alice smiled a little sadly to herself. When did their innocence fly away?_

_But they were undeniably beautiful. Even in their sudden aloof walk, their distant faces. _

_When they stepped out the elevator, Alice nearly stumbled, one of her dizzy spells once again hitting at the most unexpected moment. She shook her head, trying __to __will the blurriness __away__, make the world go still. This was her night, their night, and she wasn't going to ruin it. _

_One step at a time._

_They stepped around the corner, and familiar faces flooded into view, and she tried to stop her face twisting at the root of all her problems._

_Tsuna and all of his Guardians, Vongola Nono and his guardians, Iemitsu, the CEDEF, Lal Mirch, Reborn, nearly everyone was there. Alice suddenly felt apprehensive, the nerves from meeting the two people she had been avoiding as well as many of her friends making her anxious. _

_Could she pull it off?_

_Tsuna turned towards them with his smile and it was with his usual warmth that he addressed the three. "Welcome, Kyoko, Haru and…" Tsuna trailed off, looking at Alice. If she could've blushed, she would've, a bit tongue-tied at what to do. Kyoko smoothly stepped in._

"_She's Brighteye Reina, Alice couldn't come today so she sent Reina instead so that the Family would still have a Brighteye attending." Alice dipped into a curtsey. Tsuna bowed._

"_Nice to meet you, Reina-san."_

_His shoulders had lifted, while his eyes dimmed. His eyes were tired, she noticed, and the strange reaction didn't go unobserved. But she let it go, and tried not to stiffen too much as she pitched her voice higher and more polite than usual._

"_It's an honour to meet you, Vongola Tenth." Alice murmured, and a mildly strained smile replied._

"_Call me Tsuna. Any family of Alice is a friend of mine__,__" __h__e said kindly, and she found herself nearly unable to respond, so instead muttered a choked thank you. He then looked away, and Alice nearly wished he would recognise her just for him to look at her longer. _

_An unfamiliar voice on an unfamiliar face. She had always known she was good at acting, she told herself, mentally laughing sadly. Even Tsuna didn't recognise her._

_Cannot even one of them recognise that she was Alice?_

_She half-wished at least one would, half-wished she could just be this Reina for the evening. But from everyone's distant looks… She just smiled and stood there, unsure who she was to be paired with. _

_Haru went to Tsuna, and she was surprised until she saw Kyoko going to Ryohei. So Hana couldn't come after all, she mused to herself. Gokudera went with a random face with his usual scowl in place, Yamamoto turned from trying to cheer up the Storm Guardian to his own date. Her eyes then rested on Hibari…_

_He was standing next to a girl, and she immediately looked the other way to see Lambo standing there fidgeting nervously. _

"_Brighteye-san, please let me escort you," Lambo said very unlike himself, probably told what to do before. She heard the quiver in his voice, saw the slightly sweaty collar and smiled. What was he nervous for?_

"_Call me Reina, Lambo-san__,__" __s__he said to him as gently as she could, bending down a little so she could take his arm. "No need to be so nervous, I've heard a lot of cute stories about you and another girl called I-pin from Alice."_

_Lambo blushed at the comment, and he squeaked a "Really?" When she nodded an affirmative, he laughed before opening up fully. "Alice-nee is so strict sometimes, but I know she's nice."_

"_Yes," she nodded while feeling a bit strange to be talking about herself to him, "she likes you a lot."_

_He suddenly beamed up at her, eleven year old face shining with still a hint of innocence. She looked at him wistfully, fully aware that he was finally growing up…_

"_Then you have to call me Lambo! Without the suffix." He informed her, gripping her arm a little tighter. She looked at him bemusedly, seeing a cow-print singlet underneath his dress suit._

"_Okay, Lambo."_

_He grinned excitedly, and they stood in silence for awhile. Then a tug, and she jerked her gaze from Hibari and his date to look at him. "How did you get to know Alice-nee?"_

"_We were childhood friends," she said carefully, knowing one slip would be done for in this type of company. "We have known each other for a long, long time."_

_Lambo was bouncing on the soles of his feet, and she gently pushed his shoulder down. He complied to her gesture and stopped, turning around. "Really? Alice-nee never tells us anything about herself. I-pin and I tried to find her parents for her birthday one day, but we couldn't find them…" He trailed off sadly._

_She smiled, finally understanding why they gave her burnt cookies. Then she remembered she had to act as Reina, the childhood friend of Alice._

"_Do you want me to tell you stories about the young Alice?" __s__he asked him, tugging him through the door into a more crowded space. She lowered her head a bit, knowing her eyes would attract unwanted attention and directed him towards a side-room._

"_Yes please!"_

_She laughed, and sat them both down for a story-telling time, with her waving her arms around in the dark area, probably disrupting more than a few business talks. But it was well-rewarded by his laughter. Someone fell onto Lambo though, and she immediately stopped her story-telling._

"_Oh sorry, Lady." They apologised to her, eyeing her indiscriminately. She hated how their eyes were not directed to her face, but more annoyed at how they hadn't apologised to Lambo._

"_Apologise."_

_He looked at her surprised, before looking at her date for the evening and laughed._

"_A beauty like you," he said, and she for once was annoyed at being called beautiful, "at a dance like this with a brat?"_

"_Apologise."_

"_Come with me, I'll show you something…" __h__e said, grabbing her arm and dragging her up to her feet. He was stopped by a fierce look in Lambo's eye, and a green spark around the ring he wore around his finger._

"_Let go of Reina!"_

_His eyes widened as he recognised the ring, then the person._

"_Vongola Guardian. Crap." He made a quick getaway, and Lambo kept his gaze on him while Alice looked at Lambo. Why was she noticing how much innocence he lost now? She was about to sit back down again, when the warning signs came._

_Sitting down wasn't a good idea. She smiled, and tugged Lambo up._

"_Let's go somewhere else."_

_Her muscles screaming protest, she leaned a bit more heavily on Lambo tha__n__ she would have wished. But a scream came from the left, and they both looked to see the guy that had Lambo had threatened earlier being beaten by Hibari. Her eyes widened when he walked towards them._

_Two cold, cold eyes. _

_She remembered __how__ they warmed up with a little sparkle when he __looked at__ the Japanese garden he had constructed._

"_Hi-Hibari-san!" Lambo squeaked. _

_Should she be alarmed? Alice knew that Hibari was observant when he wanted to be. She settled with a normal welcome._

"_Hibari-san, nice to __make__ your acquaintance__,__" __s__he said, dipping into a curtsey even when her knees threatened to buckle. Vongola customs meant curtseys and bows were needed. But Hibari didn't bow back, and she mentally smiled. Of course he wouldn't abide by them. "We were about to leave, please carry on."_

"_We were?" Lambo questioned __her__. Alice shot him a glance and he nodded. "We were."_

"_So excuse us..."_

_Alice was three steps away, when there was a reply. "You look familiar."_

_She suddenly held her breath, thinking she had imagined what he had said. Had he recognised her? He always said things in a roundabout way, so he probably __had__. But was he going to do anything about it?_

_Slowing her pace down, she hoped that he would finish the ignoring game that he had started, so that they could get back to the happy days. The days when they just sat next to each other, when the__y__ fed Hibird, __when he__ show__ed__ her additions to his garden…_

_Nothing more was said, and the hope died down and she went back to her normal pace, going straight out with a confused Lambo leading the way._

"_Thank you, Lambo." She said, meaning it. Although all the work that her friends had gone to was only on display for only half an hour or so, the only thing that had lightened up the evening was him. She patted his head unconsciously, and only stopped when she saw his eyes widen._

"_A-Alice-nee?"_

_She immediately shook her head. _

"_No."_

"_Only Alice-nee does that though... But she's sick, so she __wouldn't__ have come."_

"_...Yeah."_

* * *

"_Shamal?"_

"_What is this?" He stared at the information on his hands. "This is nearly impossible!"_

"_What are you saying?" Alice scowled, and stood up. She was only doing a routine check up._

"_The Vongola Tenth asked for a detailed medical report because he felt that you were acting a bit odd. I delayed it a bit for other work, but I never expected _this…"

_Her face twisted at the sound of the Vongola Tenth, and_ _he knew that there was something up between the two. It had only been two weeks since that boy asked him to check her. What had happened?_

_Alice took the reports away, and read them. Then she sighed._

"_Don't tell them."_

"_But if you don't, at the rate this is going, you're going to be dead in the next two months at most!"_

"_I know."_

"_Then why?"_

"_This is inevitable." Alice said softly, tucking the reports under her jacket. She knew all the warning signs from the journal; first was the blurring eyesight, then the weight loss. Coughing, fever, and nausea as her body started rejecting the world it was placed into. After that was gradual loss of mobility, hearing problems and finally after that…_

_Disappearance._

_Or what people would call 'death'._

* * *

_Why was he missing her so much? _

_Tsuna didn't really know, as he stared out into the dark. He had been so confused__;__ he was relieved that he hadn't needed to meet Alice at the dance but __at the same time __he wanted to meet her so much that he had barely made it through the meeting._

_Why was he missing her so much?_

_He really didn't know. He really didn't._

_He thought he loved Kyoko, he _knew_ he had since he was in primary. But then he had to acknowledge that he had some feelings for Alice too, only a few years later. But reactions to her had never really been as extreme as Kyoko's, so he assumed he liked Kyoko more._

_Sighing, he wheeled around while closing the curtains, then got up from his chair and went to the cabinet, looking at the pictures of his friends and family. _

_Alice had always been supportive of his relationship with Kyoko, pushing them into situations that had him a near blubbering mess and her looking and blinking at him strangely._

_With Kyoko, he was a shy mess, he couldn't say anything, and what he could say made her laugh at him with that laugh he… loved._

_But with Alice, when he said something strange, they laughed together. He wasn't really a blubbering mess, and instead managed some conversations that he had really enjoyed._

_She was the innocent flower, so delicate and beautiful that he was afraid to touch it, preferring to try and approach slowly, never getting the courage to pick it, sometimes __not __even __daring to__ look at it. She was so pure, so innocent, the very image he loved._

_She was the person that got down and did the dirty work with him, comforting him when he had done something he regretted, put __in __a few jokes __at__ his expense, never really afraid of anything and instead of him protecting her, it always seemed as if it was the other way around._

_When he was with Kyoko, he felt shy, cautious, like an idiot._

_With Alice… he felt warm. Like he belonged. And although she scowled more than necessary, he loved her smile._

_Was that what they call love?_

_Had he been mistaken about what love was all this time?_

_He straightened out, and strode to the door. Determined to break the annoying avoiding game they had been playing, he went straight to her room and knocked. When after a few seconds he didn't get an answer, he got fidgety and knocked again._

"_Alice?"_

_Praying that he wasn't doing something wrong, he opened the door. The room was too dark to see, and he switched on the light to see…_

"_ALICE!"_

* * *

_There were machines connected to her. So many machines…_

_Hibari only looked impassively at the body in front of him before whirling on his heels and going back out the door, knowing he would be late to the meeting if not._

_He had known he loved her. He had never been uncertain of anything. This was the same. _

_He had only ignored her for a few weeks, thinking that the phase would pass soon. That the strange thought that __had __entered his head (__because__ love only existed for herbivores) was fake. _

_But the more he ignored her, the more he realised he missed her. _

_He would've scoffed. Asked himself why he would miss another person._

_But he did._

_Now, the machines were answering to his calls instead of her voice. He wished to hear her voice again._

_Just once more._

* * *

_Bill stared at Alice intently._

"_You can go back, you know."_

* * *

_It was sunny, the heat bearing down on the building in waves. A haze of heat covered the whole area, and the flowers wilted under the harsh sun. The only tree in the field was still too small to provide sufficient shade, and the air was sticky in its humidity._

_But all this didn't deter a group of black clad people standing in a semi-circle around a newly erected tombstone, the earth still slightly loose. A testament of what had just happened. The box being lowered…_

_He couldn't help but think of how she would complain about the lack of air conditioning. Tsuna tried to hold back his tears, trying to look strong in front of his friends and guardians but failed. A huge fat teardrop slid down his face, and he held his head down to hide it, watching as it slowly fell and darkened the ground for only a split second._

_A person to the far right stood forward, and through the fog that seemed to cloud everything he did these days he recognised Ali– her friend. That girl, Mitsuki, she had stood forward._

"_I-I guess I would never have become who I've become now if not for Alice," she said, voice cracking just a little, and she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. "She asked me to give this speech half a year ago, and back then I thought she had just been joking. I wish I hadn't now, that I spent more time with her."_

_Everyone was listening now, to the girl that they never really knew well except for her. Her, who was, was… Tsuna squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on her voice, willing himself not to think of her._

"_I wish I had listened more closely to how she would sometimes talk about what she wanted to do in the future, so that I could go do them with her and see her smile again. But wishes are wishes for a reason I guess, because I know they will never come true." Tsuna twitched as her words hit home._

* * *

"_Alice?"_

"_Yeah?" She hummed as she sorted through stacks of paper for ones that he had to sign. Tsuna massaged the cramp in his hand as he stared out the window into the sunset, knowing Gokudera would call dinner soon._

"_What would you want to do __in__ the future?"_

_After a beat too long in her pause, he swivelled around to see Alice had a bit of stiffness to her movements. Tsuna watched in confusion, not understanding such a reaction from such a relatively harmless question._

"_I… I guess I would follow you, Tsuna__,__" __s__he said quietly, straightening the papers and giving him the stack with that small smile that he so loved._

"_But other stuff? Like dreams?" __h__e pressed, because even though he was happy that she liked to follow him, he was a bit perturbed that she didn't have anything else on mind. _

_She paused again, before smiling secretly to herself. "I would like to travel to somewhere where I could see an Aurora. They seem so beautiful in those photos…" _

"_Maybe we could go see them sometime together," Tsuna said with a slight blush that was hidden in the red sunlight. Alice suddenly smiled and patted his head._

"_Maybe."_

* * *

"_She was an amazing person and that was definitely true. She seemed to say all the right things at the wrong times, down to earth, loyal, and a bit stubborn, but such a good friend to have. She always tried her best to help the people around her…"_

_That Mitsuki girl trailed off, and Hibari was secretly glad. He had an appearance to uphold, he couldn't break here. Not here in front of all these people. Hibird leaned into his __neck,__ for once silent, as if knowing its master's sorrow._

_For nothing else could describe what he was feeling right now. He continued to stand stiffly, ignoring all those other people and focused on the grave in front of him._

_Sorrow… and regret._

* * *

_He was lying in the sun on the school rooftop, enjoying the warmth it provided. It was silent, quiet, peaceful, no crowding at all. The little bird hopped around his head, and suddenly chirped happily at a creak of the door._

_Knowing __that __the only person who would dare to go to the roof __when he was__ there was her… He flicked open an amused eye before giving one of his 'hn's._

_She nodded back, giving a grin before settling next to him. He was expecting the usual feeling of crowding, of oppression that came from too many bodies next to him and suffocating him… But it didn't come._

_Mildly surprised, he looked at the girl next to him. Grey haired, pale skinned, who shot a smile at him when she noticed he was looking. He closed his eyes immediately, a bit confused as to why his heart was beating so fast even without him moving. _

_They stayed like that, in comfortable silence._

* * *

"_It may seem a bit pathetic, but I didn't know much about her. I only knew she had a grandpa that lived with her in her apartment, had a bit of money to her name, was always involved with things that she told me not to get involved with. But that didn't matter."_

_She paused, and continued plunging in. "I knew _her_. I knew she loved hash browns with hot chocolate, loved secretly reading teenage romance novels, was really smart, and a bit sarcastic. I knew she was good-hearted, wanted the world to become better, and always somehow seemed to know more than she pretended to know. Her eyes always seemed to look straight into your soul."_

_Mitsuki paused, before smiling softly. "Guess it was one of her best traits. When you were upset, she would just sit next to you to tell you she was there. And you didn't feel like you had to explain the situation, because well, she would already know."_

* * *

_Tsuna sat at his desk for the first time as Vongola Decimo, the huge varnished antique table in front of him glaring at him and telling him that he wasn't supposed to be here. _

_Actually the whole room seemed so, the carpet, the huge window behind him showing splendid grounds that just _weren't his_, the sturdy wooden doors, the whole mansion. Why was he this? Why was he here?_

_He buried his hands into his hair, and leaning his elbows on the table, he questioned himself yet again why he formally accepted this position. A few drops splashed into his blurry reflection in his desk._

"_Reborn said to get your butt down there because all the boxes are unpacked…" a dry voice came from the door, louder than usual. It opened, and the voice stopped when she saw him._

_He felt rather than heard her close the door and her stepping towards him, footsteps slow as usual. Then she slid into the chair across from him, and just sat there listening to him cry. After a minute or so of this, Tsuna suddenly felt self-conscious and looked up._

_She was looking past him at the garden, and at his movement looked at him. She patted his head._

"_The garden is much bigger than we're used to, isn't it? So much harder to tend well." _

_Tsuna looked up, wondering where she was going._

"_But if everyone takes a small section for themselves, then it would be a piece of cake. Remember that, Tsuna. Flowers are only beautiful when tended, after all."_

* * *

_Tsuna wiped his eyes with a sleeve. He did remember._

_He remembered all too well._

"_She had the rare ability called 'just being there'; somehow not doing much, blending into the background, but you knew she was always there. She had always been part of the group somehow, sometimes balancing out the craziness in life with her predictable personality."_

_A slight wind started blowing, the open sobs of Haru, Kyoko, Setsuna and Ryohei drifting over the group like a melancholy song. Yamamoto was looking at the grave with hard eyes, Gokudera standing next to him with his hair yet again covering his face. Hana was comforting Ryohei, her face twisted into a shape that was clearly trying to withhold tears._

_Tsuna started crying soundlessly, standing at the front of the group. His shoulders were shaking, and just listening about _her_ traits made his heart rip open. _

_And a skylark looked up at the sky with his eyes dry._

* * *

"_It's never too late__,__" __s__he said bluntly, chopping something up in the kitchen. "I can still apologise. It's as simple as saying a few words. It's not that hard."_

"_Really__.__" He drawled __the word, __his face impassive but secretly enjoying watching her struggle through making a dish which, to his standards, was relatively simple. He was standing near the doorway, and he adjusted his tie a little while waiting for her answer._

"_Yes." She said __it __with uncharacteristic fierceness that he found he strangely liked. Made her seem less like an herbivore, even though she wasn't one. _

"_Hn." With that, he left the kitchen wondering why he felt so strange whenever he was with her. It didn't happen with any other people, and he even entertained the thought that his hormones were finally acting. But when he placed himself near some women that approached him, he still felt the same contempt._

_It was her. And only her._

_Why?_

* * *

_Why? It was simple, because…_

_It was too late, wasn't it?_

_Hibari had this revelation standing behind the crowd. His realisation came too late, his timing too bad, and when he finally figured it out, she had already weakened to a state near death._

_It was painful to watch. It was the first time he had ever felt anything like the pain he felt when he watched her struggle to even breathe, something greater than all the cuts and bruises he had ever collected in his life. It was something that made him want to take up her hand to say that he was there, hoping that she would get better._

_But he couldn't, only because her hand had already been taken by the not-so-herbivore._

_So he __began__ to tak__e __long__er__ ways to his rooms or meeting places so he could go past her room to make sure she was there, and alive._

"_To Alice, who had always been there," her friend said at the front, "I want to say thank you, once again. And good bye, we all hope you're resting in peace. Please…" Her voice finally cracked too much to speak, and she rushed back to the orange-haired girl._

_Goodbye._

_For the whole group, it wasn't time yet. But for two particular people, it was more than that._

_Sadness, grief, guilt, sorrow, anguish, pain… but most of all regret._

_Because they both hadn't got the chance to say three simple words. Words that they now knew, with all their heart, were true._

_Regret, because they hadn't got the chance to say,_

_To say..._

_I love you._


	24. The Sky Battle! There are times where

**I really do hope people like this... I rushed it a bit, so it may seem choppy compared to previous chapters. But I do hope people do enjoy this. TT_TT I've been mulling over this chapter for a long time, and I don't like it much. But whatever, I figured people would enjoy an update than an author mulling over a chapter that she's not happy about. XD**

**Thanks to my sister! Thanks to my reviewers! Thanks to everyone who've read thus far, I THANK YOU ALL!**

**Please enjoy.**

* * *

"_Our objective is to rescue the Ninth," Iemitsu said quietly, eyeing the Vongola mansion and calculating the time needed for infiltration. "In the case that we fail our objective, we have to ascertain that the Ninth is still alive."_

"_Yes, Master." _

_Oregano blended back into the forest to bring __Iemitsu's __orders to the other members of the CEDEF, and after a silent prayer, he waited for the distraction he asked for. After a few minutes, an explosion from the far side shook the ground, and he started running._

'_Please be alive, Ninth...'_

* * *

Even as I was falling, I made sure the gel layer covering my hands was intact, no holes or anything.

Grinning grimly when my check said that yes, the gel was spread as evenly as I could, I started my plan. Immediately wrapping my legs around the cloth, I went from falling to swinging, holding my head close to my chest to reduce chances of the acid burning my head while dipping my hands into the acid.

The acid was closer than I had expected. Hair that been hanging down suddenly got dragged before giving way and dissolving in the acid. I tucked my head even closer to my chest while still making sure my hands got enough acid.

Enough acid for my purpose, anyway. I didn't need much.

I swung back up a little slower than I had hoped, and he was already on the part where I would swing up and land. Obstructing my safe route yet again, huh?

My face had unconsciously twisted into a scowl, and he looked down with a smirk. I saw a knife in his hands, him clearly preparing to stab me to death or something of that kind. I just glared at him, and whipped my hands forward to press them into his legs, perfectly in my area of attack. He had unknowingly helped my attack, fool.

His face immediately turned into one of a silent scream, a high keening noise coming from his mouth than a full blown scream. He staggered, and dropped his knife, slashing my arm. I immediately put one leg over the cloth to stabilise myself, ignoring the pain, gritting my teeth. I pressed harder, feeling the acid burning through the gel on my hands before the gel finally gave way and I was in a hell of my own making.

A few more seconds, of us trying to hold out more than the other, and he finally toppled sideways. The moonlight suddenly came out again to blind me, but burning into my eyes was the image of two shallow palm-sized holes in his legs. I immediately closed my eyes, and tried to crawl forward to get to his ring.

There was a strange numbness to my palms, but after I crawled forward two steps, pain from my palms flashed through my arms to my whole body. Immediately retracting my hands, I opened my eyes to see what...

I closed my eyes to try and ignore what I just saw, and knowing better than to crawl on my hands with my hands in that state, I lurched up. Then I slowly shuffled forward, my eyes swimming from the ignited pain, kind of wanting to vomit from looking from my hands, the moonlight kind of making the world spin in a most nauseating way.

Taking deep breaths, I blinked. Kneel on his chest just in case he gets up... yes, that's it, I encouraged myself. Reach out an arm, reach for the ring. Gently take it...

I immediately gritted my teeth, the pain shooting through my arm, immobilising it no matter how I yelled in my brain. Clutching it to my chest, I vaguely noted Tsuna appealing to the Cervello through the glass, as well as everyone's drawn faces.

They were all worried...

For some reason, I felt happy.

What Tsuna was shouting I couldn't hear, but when the Cervello responded, speakers I didn't know existed burst into life.

"The Battle is only won when the two halves of the Star Ring are joined."

No choice then.

Counting to three, I closed my eyes and pulled the Ring off his neck, snapping the chain. If touching was pain, pulling was _torture._ My eyesight was blurring with tears when I tried to join the two Rings together.

And it did, with a final _click_ that seemed to resound throughout the enclosed area. Then immediately, the bright lights came on again, and I was kneeling on him with me desperately trying to shield my eyes from the bright light. It was suddenly so warm…

"Winner, Brighteye Alice," the Cervello said in their monotone voice. There was a slight vibration, and I realised that the walls were being retracted back into the ground. Suddenly, I could hear again.

"Alice!" Two voices said together, followed by a shout from Gokudera and Ryohei.

"Freaky-eyes!"

"Bright!"

Daring to open my eyes, I only saw dark silhouettes running towards me. I slowly got up, and walked as steadily as I could to them.

"Guys," I croaked out, then widened my eyes at my voice.

"Alice, are you okay?" Tsuna fretted, hands hovering uncertainly.

I coughed a bit to clear my throat before grinning at their still, strangely, blurry forms.

"Yeah."

"Stop crying, freaky-eyes," Gokudera's slightly gruff voice came from the side, "the battle's over."

Then I belated realised I really was crying. No wonder they were blurry.

"Yeah, Alice!" Yamamoto's said as cheerfully as ever, just when I was carefully using my sleeves to wipe my eyes. "It was a really good fight!"

"Heh," I couldn't help but say, "I was always nearly falling off."

"Your eyes were giving you away. I don't know why your eyes are glow in the dark like that, but that's just something special about you isn't it? Haha!" Yamamoto said. I widened my eyes at him.

No wonder he could always throw knives at me. Thinking about it, he never actually threw knives at my lower body...

"OH NO!" Ryohei burst out from the back. He had been looking especially contemplative, before suddenly bursting out. We all turned to look at him, and he was in his 'thinking pose', consisting of his right fist in his left palm, wide eyes and all. "We forgot to do Bright's support circle! We have to correct this EXTREMELY unsportsmanlike behaviour!"

Huh?

I puzzled over it with a scowl on my face; only Yamamoto seemed to be on the wave length. Gokudera and I seemed to both be trying to figure it out while Tsuna was doing his stare thing, his 'why are my friends so crazy' thing. I suddenly understood why Gokudera was always saying 'stupid jocks'.

"Oh yeah, sempai!" Yamamoto laughed as Gokudera and I stared at him disbelievingly (how did he understand?), "we have to do _that_ right?"

"Yeah, we have to do it NOW!"

And suddenly, Ryohei had roped Tsuna and Gokudera, Yamamoto roping me and Tsuna (since Tsuna had been standing between them), and I found myself in a circle with Gokudera to my left and Yamamoto to my right.

"But sempai," Yamamoto said brightly, "we can't say good luck now, right?"

Ryohei ignored Gokudera's predictable muttering about 'stupid jocks' and suddenly his face brightened. "We'll say congratulations instead!"

I was actually pretty happy, just standing there a bit bent over as they planned.

"On the count of three... One! Two! Three! AN EXTREME CONGRATULATIONS, BRIGHT!"

Even though I knew everyone else shouted (except for Gokudera), I could only hear Ryohei.

And even though I was extremely happy about all this... did my eardrums just burst?

We broke away from the circle, me mainly because of Gokudera wrenching himself away, and Ryohei just stepped away and started laughing rambunctiously with his hands on his hips. Tsuna was rubbing his ear with one eye closed, and I started joining Ryohei in laughing (a bit hysterically, but it's still laughter, right?)

Looking at all the happy faces around me, I was happy.

Now the story could continue like normal.

"We will now announce the next Battle," the Cervello said, breaking our happy mood. All the happiness drained away, and suddenly everyone started worrying again. "The next battle is... the battle between the Guardians of the Rain."

Yamamoto jerked, and we all looked at him, just to follow his gaze to Squalo. He was grinning, nearly exposing all his teeth.

"VOIII! It's finally my turn, brat!" Yamamoto only stood in silence, looking at him with excitement in his eye. Or maybe it was anticipation. "I can finally having some fun! From the night before, I know you've learnt some skills. But your chances of winning have gone from zero percent," he smirked, "to zero percent."

And Yamamoto just smiled at his psychological attack, and said calmly, "We'll see about that."

Squalo growled. "Katana-brat."

But I never got to see the rest of it, because while Tsuna and the others were preoccupied with Yamamoto and Squalo, Grey whisked into view from some weird place and took me away in the same fashion, plopping sunglasses on my eyes and carefully avoiding my arms.

As I was bundled up into the car, I thought I saw a shadow leaving the roof.

But maybe that was my imagination.

* * *

Grey tutted at my hands.

"Miss, they will need at least two months to heal." Then he looked at my hair and tutted again. "And your hair needs a trim. It looks jagged."

I didn't really respond, preoccupied as I was in trying to send an email with my right elbow.

To anyone who tries; don't. It's surprisingly hard.

Grey raised his eyebrows at what I was trying to do (I bet he was thinking I was an idiot. Believe me, at that point I was thinking I was one too), before sighing and shaking his head in that way that you know he had given up on the youth of the world. "What message are you trying to send, miss?"

"A theory I had about my opponent just then."

He gently turned the laptop to himself, and then started deleting all my hard work of five minutes. "Dictate what you want to tell to... Anise-sama."

Looking at my hands, they were thickly bandaged to the point that I knew I wasn't going to type (or do anything that required any bending of fingers). I nodded, and starting talking about how I thought that Jared had been an assassin that had been after Tsuna's life, therefore my mission, how as he's an assassin that he should be employed by someone. But why would a person go to such lengths to get one person? And how did he know Tsuna was there when he was so well hidden?

Although I was talking a bit fast, Grey's fingers were flying across the keyboard faster than I could ever done.

Of _course_ Grey would be good at typing.

* * *

I glared at the pile of presents on my desk. I forgot, today was my birthday, wasn't it? Yet another year over, but it was the first year I got so many presents. Looking around the pile, I saw bright eyes looking at me and mentally shuddered.

Fanboys.

Trying to look over the pile was impossible, so I just lay my head on the window sill and looked up, mentally telling myself to ignore the people looking at me. The windowsill was more comfortable than I would have thought, and I found my thoughts wandering…

"_No going outside late now, you should know that resting is the basis of all healing."_

"_But Grey!" I tried to protest, "I have to support the others!"_

_He didn't give. Annoying stubborn butlers. Annoying stubborn butlers who gave me extra crispy hash-browns with stupid grandfatherly-proud smiles that didn't let me stay mad at them._

"Alice!" Kyoko said, jerking me out of my annoyed reliving of last night. She held up my bandaged hands, and then looked up at my face just to smile extra wide before settling back to her worried frown. Knowing that extra wide smile meant that I had to snap out of my default scowl, I tried to twist my face into a smile.

"Huh?"

"Your hands!" she said in distress, holding them carefully even when she was looking at them with a critical eye.

"Oh," I said, trying to make my face stay in its stupid (probably constipated, as Setsuna would tell me) smile, "you know, sumo contest." I continued pulling a Ryohei, "Last night it was my turn, and my opponent accidently stomped on them."

And to finish my remarkably believablelie, I finished it with high nervous laughter.

Kyoko searched my face before sighing and shaking her head. "You should be careful next time, okay Alice?"

"Yes, yes." I nodded at her, then nodded at the charms in her hands. "Which one are you up to now?"

"Oh, we had a few problems in thinking which shape we should give Gokudera-san!" Kyoko grimaced. I grinned at that.

"Put an alien on that. He'll love that."

"Eh? Why, Alice-chan?"

I just moved slowly away, mentally chuckling at (what I imagined) was going to be Gokudera's reaction when he got his charm. Maybe I could get my hands on it and tell Grey to sew a 'stupid octopus head' on the back...

Got to keep my arguing buddy in shape after all.

Of course, while I was saying that I was trying to brainstorm ways to escape my butler and watch Yamamoto's match.

Results after five hours of thinking:

Absolute zilch results.

So I settled with visiting Yamamoto before sunset.

* * *

_To say the truth, Yamamoto was slightly shaken from Dino's announcement. Transcend Styles?_

_He stared out into the sunset, knowing his fight would be soon. Hugging the bamboo sword closer to himself, he tried to puzzle out his thoughts. His father had been the leading figure of his life; he had never been wrong (not that he knew, anyway). He said the Shigure Souen Style was Invincible, so he believed him._

_But... He couldn't help but doubt. He was glad that Tsuna and the kid had left him alone to choose. Tsuna was a worry-wart, a brave worry-wart but still a worry-wart. As his friend, he knew he couldn't show any doubt in front of him._

_Should he leave his father's sword behind?_

"_Yamamoto."_

_He jumped, seriously not expecting anyone. Actually, he didn't even sense anyone behind him, which was strange because he'd been practically bursting with adrenaline since yesterday night. He smiled brightly at Alice, noting this. Maybe he could get some tips from her or something._

"_Alice!"_

_She blinked slowly, and then frowned. He turned his eyes back to the sunset again, and he heard a rustle of cloth from his left where she had sat down next to him._

"_What's up?" __s__he asked with her pronunciation as clear and slow as usual. He had picked up on that, added to the fact that she was a foreigner... So he tried to talk slower than normal around her. Then he found that talking slower was actually quite nice sometimes..._

_He glanced at her, trying to __find words to __explain the situation about the long-haired guy and him defeating styles, Dino's words of transcending styles, his doubt, his father's words... And his instinct told him that she already knew most of it. Everything but his thoughts of the matter._

_With anyone else, he would have been alarmed. But somehow with her, he felt it was fine. She knew how to keep her secrets. _

"_Doubt about my style__,__" __h__e said at last, and just as he expected, her eyes flashed understanding. _

"_Why should you doubt?" __s__he finally asked as she leaned back onto a wooden beam. He laughed, and kept looking out at the sky. It was turning into dusk. Yamamoto turned her question around his head, and answered as truthfully as he could._

"_I want to win, and then the guy with Tsuna tells me that I can't win over my opponent with one style. But my father says that Shigure Souen Style is enough to beat him."_

"_So you're unsure about that?"_

_He laughed, unsure about the tone behind her words. She sighed, obviously noting his confusion and continued. "What Dino said is true."_

_Yamamoto stiffened._

"_But that doesn't mean that the Shigure Souen Style isn't invincible. Trust your father, when he says something there is usually a meaning. He said it was invincible, so it is invincible. It's whether you believe it yourself is the question." She looked at him with those sharp eyes. "You need absolute confidence."_

_He blinked, and then laughed. _

"_Okay then! I'll just use my dad's style on this!"_

_She smiled then, and leaned more heavily on the beam before standing up. Had she been tense before? Over what?_

"_Well, today's my birthday." _

_Yamamoto's eyes widened, and he immediately felt guilty. "Oh no, Alice! I don't have a present..."_

"_It's okay. I've got enough of those." She grimaced a bit and he got a clue on who she got those presents from. He wanted to laugh at her mouthing 'stupid fanboys', but knew not to._

"_Just win and I'll call that my birthday present. I can't come to your match today, so I came by to visit."_

_He blinked at the confidence in her tone. She expected him to win. Then he laughed just as always. Somehow, he felt lighter._

"_That's a deal!"_

_It was only after she left and he was walking out of his house with his dad's bamboo sword in hand that he realised that he had never told her that his dad told him that the Shigure Souen Style was 'invincible'._

_He shrugged._

_It seemed somehow fitting she would know._

_He got up, putting the bamboo sword over his shoulder like he always did with his bat and set off with his usual grin in place._

* * *

"_If my dad says it's invincible, then it's invincible," _I heard Yamamoto say through the little transmitter that I stuck on Tsuna's shirt days ago. He should seriously change shirts more.

"_Yamamoto's a natural hitman." _

And that was the last thing I heard before Grey picked the earphones out of my ears and switched off my torch.

* * *

I bludged school the next day, and went straight to Yamamoto's sushi shop.

"Oi, Yamamoto!"

"Yo, Alice!"

He grinned at me, his eyes a bit dimmer than usual. It was obvious he had been in a fight, he had bandages everywhere. But he was working hard with wiping tables. What would make him...?

Ah, Squalo.

He didn't know he was still alive, did he? Last time I checked, somehow he had been transferred to some faraway hospital. But of course, I shouldn't tell.

"I won."

"I know."

I just sat there, watching him work with his smile on his face.

"Hey."

"Hmm?"

"Why don't you go baseball?" He looked surprised, as if he actually _forgot_ about baseball. I raised an eyebrow, before just ignoring it. "If you can clean, you should be able to play, right? Can't get your form down."

Yamamoto looked tempted, before staring at the rag in his hands. "But I said I would mind the shop..."

"I'm on pretty good terms with your old man. I'll just tell him. I don't really want to go to school anyway."

Yamamoto laughed, and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Thanks, Alice! You're a good friend!"

Then he left with his eyes a bit brighter and baseball on his shoulder just like normal.

That was easy.

"Oh, is Takeshi out?" His dad asked as he came in a few minutes later. I nodded.

"He seemed a bit off, so I told him to play baseball."

His eyebrows lifted, and then he laughed. I suddenly knew where all his wrinkles came from; they all matched perfectly when he laughed. "I should have thought of that! Your first sword fight is a life-changing event after all."

Then he eyed my hands and grinned at me. "And I see you've had a bit of battling of your own."

"Heh." I laughed a bit with him before getting up. "Well, my duty with minding the shop is over, so bye, Yamamoto's dad."

He laughed again, before asking if I wanted sushi. When I shook my head, he laughed again before saying bye and I left feeling light-hearted myself.

* * *

"Grey, today is Chrome's match. You know, that girl that we helped settle into the abandoned amusement park."

"I know who you're talking about, miss."

"So let me go and say hello, at least."

He looked at me contemplatively before sighing.

"For two minutes."

I mentally cheered, and we headed down towards the parking lot for the Toyota... only to find that it wasn't there. Grey frowned, before whipping out a phone from somewhere (I don't know where, but he didn't have a pocket that I knew of except for the one at the front of his jacket, so... the secrets of being a butler?) and put in a phone call.

Two minutes later, the car that came in my nightmares came out.

"Oh gosh, Grey. What is with that... overly flashy car?"

"Sorry, this is the only alternative car that we have."

I gulped, suddenly not really wanting to go out. Then I remembered Chrome and her shyness and resolved myself. Gritting my teeth, I forced a foot into the car and Grey did the rest, closing the door behind me, sliding into the driver's seat and driving out of the car park.

We screeched to a stop outside the school just when the Kokuyo Gang was going in. I stepped out of the car.

"What's with that overly flashy car, Brighteye?" Ken snarked at me. I twitched and ignored him. Chikusa was just doing his blank-staring thing just like normal, and I ignored him as well to go straight to Chrome.

"A-Alice!" she said softly, surprised. I tried to smile, and this time I found it wasn't hard.

"Chrome, long time no see. How're you doing? They aren't being too mean to you, are they?"

Chrome immediately shook her head, her pineapple hair flying everywhere. I raised my eyebrows at it before looking at Chrome again. "No, they're very nice."

Even Ken did a disbelieving snort at that. I turned my raised eyebrow look to Ken (he looked away), before turning back to Chrome.

"Well, I hope you're not too nervous about things. I came just in case you were feeling nervous."

Chrome's hands gripped harder at her trident, and she nodded. "I am a bit nervous, but I trust Mukuro-sama."

This time, it was me who nearly snorted disbelievingly. But remembering the company of Mukuro-believers around me, I stopped just in time. "Well, Tsuna's really nice. No need to fear him. Just go and greet him as your Boss or something. You can even kiss him on the cheek if you want, I bet he'll like that."

"He... would?" She stared at me with one huge purple eye. I smirked to myself.

"I think so. He's a boy, after all. I mean, you're cute."

Tsuna had the worst girl-tolerance I have ever seen.

"I'm... cute?" She said disbelievingly.

"Yeah?" I replied. But just then, Grey whisked me back into the car.

"Your two minutes is up, Miss. We'll be leaving now, excuse me."

I waved to them, and only Chrome deigned to wave back. Chikusa kept staring, before turning back to the entrance of the school. Ken did a 'cheh' thing, before walking alongside Chikusa. Chrome then ran to catch up, and I lost sight of them.

While mentally regretting that I couldn't see her fight, I did a one-eighty when I remembered that they would be seeing Mukuro there. And weren't illusions really hard on the brain or something?

I settled back into the chair, wincing a bit when I banged my hands. What was the situation now?

After this was Hibari's fight, and after that was the grand revealing of the Ninth in Gola Mosca. Xanxus would kind of challenge Tsuna, and if nothing changed the Cervello would take charge and call it the 'sky battle'. Where all the Guardians would be showing up.

My fellow candidate Star Guardian had been elusive, so much that even the network couldn't catch him. In the past few days, I had been sitting and relaxing, yes, but I had also been working. Knowing his former position had increased the chances of us catching his past, and I had a lead.

If I had a lead, that meant I only had to affirm it and follow. Like a string, straight to the heart.

Because the ultimate question was this; why would a country boy suddenly be recruited into ranks of the assassins of the world when his brother had protected him from it previously? His brother Red had been quite impressive, having a ninety-two percent of success in all of his missions.

But then suddenly, after a mission two years ago he disappeared, leaving a younger brother to fill his spot. His brother did the jobs that had been left for his brother, before suddenly disappearing half a year ago, to just reappear here.

Two years ago was Tsuna's attempted assassination, which was stopped by me.

So if I had connected the dots together properly...

I shook my head. I would get to see Jared after Hibari had fought, in the Sky battle.

I would question him then.

* * *

There are times, when you feel your life is whizzing past in a blur of monotony, just day after day after day after day without stop. And there are days just seem like they are going to go on forever because so much had happened. I think today was going to be one of those days in the middle.

Grey had sighed, and given in under my arguments (after half an hour, stubborn old grandpa) and drove me to the school just to find the I missed Hibari's fight and instead walked onto a field where Tsuna was kneeling next to a Vongola Ninth and a crushed Gola Mosca.

Xanxus was standing on the field, the lights highlighting his face, the wind blowing his jacket open as his voice somehow echoed around the field.

"I'll carve your name into Vongola's history books. As the foolish runt who dared to defy Xanxus all by his little self," he growled down at him with a sneer. Gokudera in front of me visibly bristled at his comment, and he took a step forward.

"He's not alone!" Gokudera yelled, "The boss's will is our will!"

"My will is my own," Hibari said, face blank.

All of them got into fighting stances, and I found I was in the curious position a little behind, but right next to them so I could see Tsuna's face. None of them had noticed me yet, but I guess I would've been one of them in any other perspective.

Part of the group, huh...

Levi immediately reacted. "You want some of this, you brats?"

Belphegor grinned as well, flashing his knives in a fan in one of his hands. "How about it?" he asked Xanxus in front of them. He didn't react until a few tense seconds later.

"Exterminate the traitors." He said, and the Varia that were there immediately tensed for action. They were just about to move when a voice interrupted.

"Hold it right there, please." Everyone looked at them, standing in the middle of the cloud battleground. Even with the bewildered and hostile looks, they ignored them and continued. "We will be in charge of–"

"-the battle for the ninth boss's revenge." The other Cervello continued.

"What!" Ryohei burst out.

"We have a duty to oversee the whereabouts of the Vongola Rings." They replied blandly, the whole field quiet just for them. Yamamoto had lapsed into silence at the back, not even restraining Gokudera as he burst out yet again.

"What the hell are you talking about? You're just Xanxus's dogs!"

"Please watch your mouth," and she held up the document with the ninth's flame signature. "We have an official decree from the ninth boss himself. Any changing of hands of the Rings will not be approved without our ratification."

There was a few seconds of silence before Basil spoke out, indignant at what was happening. "You've got some nerve!" He yelled in a way that was very out of character. "You forced the ninth boss to give you that dying will flame seal against his will!"

Xanxus smirked at that, and Tsuna gritted his teeth, seeing it. All of the Guardians in front of me took a few steps a forward (except for Hibari), but the Cervello kept on talking before they did much more.

"The winner of this battle will become the next Vongola boss, so we declare this the Sky Ring Battle."

I nodded, happy that events were taking place just like they were in my memory. Nothing had changed. Reborn immediately shot a look at the movement, and widened his eyes to see me. Then he immediately frowned, and I wondered at that before looking back at the Cervello.

"In other words, this will be the last of the eight Ring contest battles held over the past week. How does that sound, Xanxus-sama?"

"Not a bad idea," he said.

And so, without looking at Tsuna, they continued. "Then tomorrow night, will everyone please assemble at Nami-chu?"

Belphegor snickered, before smirking and looking straight at Gokudera like a challenge. "Ushishi – The fake got a suspended sentence for now."

"Watch it, you ass-hole!" Gokudera seethed. Yamamoto laid a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and opened his mouth again to say something else that was probably offensive. He got cut off by Reborn.

"Tsuna is exhausted from his training today. That's good news for us," he said, eyes hidden under his fedora.

"Pfft," Xanxus said, still looking straight down at a Tsuna who was determinedly staring back, "Tomorrow will be the final chapter in this happy comedy." He took off his Ring and snapped it back into its halves. "Make sure you're up for it."

Tsuna caught it with an exclamation, fumbling it characteristically before catching it. Xanxus's ring suddenly glowed, and after a huge light explosion the Varia had disappeared along with the Cervello.

"They're gone... those girls too!" Ryohei exclaimed even as Basil ran forward towards Tsuna.

"Ninth!" He knelt down next to him, staring at him as if at loss. There was a mild chaotic air around the place, now that Xanxus had gone.

"Are we too late?"

I looked backwards, and there he was, Dino. He had about twenty-five of his subordinates with him waiting for his orders.

"Bucking Bronco!" Basil yelled. Dino smiled at him briefly before snapping back into seriousness.

"You people, help the Ninth and the injured!"

They immediately got to work, nearly all of them medical professionals. One of them went to me, but I shook my head indicating I wasn't hurt (I wasn't here for most of it anyway) and he nodded before turning to the Ninth. Some went around with metal detectors to disable the mines, and I was relieved to find all the tension in the air had diffused.

"I received news from the CEDEF team, but I never thought it would come to this..." Dino said to Reborn quietly in front of me. "Are you all right?"

"The damage we received is quite substantial, but..." Reborn trailed off, staring onto the field. It brought my attention to it too, and Yamamoto and Gokudera were walking on the field interrupting the work of Dino's subordinates.

"You okay, Hibari?" Yamamoto called to him. Hibari just kind of ignored him, staring at the destroyed field in a way that I knew he was annoyed.

"How usual for you to be so restrained." Gokudera commented. I waved to Chrome, who was waving at me, and she scurried off after Ken and Chikusa and listened for Hibari's response.

"If this situation can draw out that herbivore's true strength, then I won't interfere yet."

I sighed.

How like Hibari.

Reborn suddenly jumped forward, and before I knew it he was landing on Tsuna's back. And Tsuna, who had been staring over the ruined field in obvious thought, stared at Reborn in his oh-why-does-he-always-do-this way.

Thinking about it, he always does that face.

"You better get yourself properly recharged for tomorrow's fight."

And instead of replying, Tsuna yelled his question.

"Why do you ALWAYS HAVE TO KICK ME?"

Reborn gave his Reborn answer. "Because I'm really vexed right now."

"What kind of reason is that!"

Reborn was smirking, before he sobered and looked at me. "But first, Alice."

"Yes?" I replied.

"Hiie? Alice?" Tsuna looked around, and widened his eyes at the sight of me standing on top of the hill.

"Did you already know of the Ninth's situation?" Reborn asked with his eyes shadowed.

* * *

_Tsuna was tired, and he was so worried. But Reborn had, as always, made him feel better._

"_But first, Alice." He heard Reborn say in his scary voice, the one that he used when he was truly angry. Alice? She was here?_

"_Yes?" A voice came from above. _

"_Hiie? Alice?" He said, looking up and gulping. She was shadowed, her hair bleached white from the lights, and her face all dark except for her eyes. Her eyes were yellow, just as if he was looking at them from day, glaring out at him. So unnatural..._

"_Did you already know of the Ninth's situation?" Reborn asked, his eyes shadowed by the tilt of head. His voice was so ominously quiet. Tsuna expected an immediate 'no', but there was a pause and he looked at Alice._

_It couldn't be, right? She would've said something. She would've told him, or Reborn, or someone at least..._

"_You're a Brighteye, something so big wouldn't have escaped your network__,__" Reborn continued in his scarily flat voice. _

_The mutters of Dino's men were coming from the background, Gokudera and Yamamoto were arguing about something at the back. But somehow, nothing seemed to penetrate the wall of silence between Reborn and Alice._

"_..." Alice said nothing, unblinking and unmoving. A wind blew and he shivered. Her eyes were so intense, so alien that he wished she would blink so he could breathe. But her gaze wasn't directed at him anyway. _

_And then a movement._

"_Yes. I knew."_

_Reborn's arm twitched, and suddenly he couldn't move from the aura he was sending._

"_Why didn't you say anything?"_

_There was a pause, and he could see the blank face that Alice always had in her voice._

"_Because no-one asked."_

_Reborn next to him seriously twitched this time, but suddenly a shadow without inhuman eyes was standing next to her, but no less intimidating._

"_Grey." It was a statement, not a question, and he wondered how she knew it was him. He knew the kind-of grandpa that she had for a butler was standing next to her by her statement. But suddenly, he didn't seem so grandfatherly._

"_Miss, we have to go now."_

"_Yes."_

_They left, leaving Tsuna swirling with doubts and Reborn with his hand on his gun._

* * *

School the next day. I immediately retreated to the roof, after staying enough for roll call. I was on the water tank this time, the highest point of the school and looking at the sky. The door creaked, and I looked down to see Tsuna looking out from the roof fence.

What was he doing here?

I racked my brains for why he was there, but it was answered when the door creaked again and a mop of orange hair bobbed into view. The scene flashed into my mind; Kyoko and Tsuna on the roof, her giving him the charm.

"Kyoko-chan!" he exclaimed. "Good morning."

Kyoko faltered by Tsuna's uncharacteristic normal greeting, the calm smile instead of a blush and stutter. I inwardly laughed, thinking they were perfect for each other.

"Ah, Reborn-kun said you were here."

"That guy said so?" Tsuna asked with obvious disbelief at Reborn doing something so nice for him.

Kyoko leaned forward before saying something in such a happy voice that I knew she was grinning that smile of hers; it could cheer anybody up.

"It's true! It's exactly like Reborn-kun said!"

"Hmm?"

"Today, Tsuna-kun's face looks like a bullet train!"

Amid Tsuna's screams of disbelief (he does that every day, so I've learnt to tune it out), I puzzled over it in my brain. Bullet train?

Maybe I wasn't as up to date in the way of Japanese puns as I thought...

"Haha!" Kyoko laughed, and Tsuna stopped his screaming to laugh with her. They continued this for a few more seconds, before Kyoko reached into her pocket. "This is for Tsuna-kun."

"A charm?" Tsuna accepted it (I winced at the bad stitching of the tuna from even here), before freaking out like good-old Tsuna always did. "Hiie! For me?" he yelled.

"Mhmm!" Kyoko nodded. "Lately, lots of people are getting injured at the sumo tournament right? So this is for safety protection and for victory too!"

Tsuna did his oh-my-friends-are-so-crazy face for a second before going back to his normal smiley face. "Thank you! For the next fight," Tsuna said, looking up, "There's no way I'm going to lose."

Kyoko was visibly taken aback, and even I raised my eyebrows. Tsuna looked pretty cool just then.

"Eh... Ah..." Kyoko floundered for something say before her hand reached into her pocket and she bounced up again. "Ah, that's right! I have one for Gokudera-kun, Yamamoto-kun, and Alice too!"

"What, it's not just for me?" Tsuna said, surprised. I snickered into my hand, before wondering at how Kyoko had made me one too.

I peered down, on my stomach by now, feeling like I was watching a romance movie. She was so nice.

"Furthermore, the charms were made by all of us!" Kyoko said happily.

"All of you...?"

"Yup! Like how the words were sewn by me, see?" Tsuna looked at the words. "And the tuna was sewn on by Alice!"

"Alice?"

"Yup!"

He held it up wonderingly. "Alice did?"

"Mhmm! She didn't seem to like the sewing though, and she even took Gokudera's charm away to sew a stupid 'octopus head' on it. It didn't seem like Alice did it, but then..."

"Tsuna-san!"

Haru burst out onto the roof, and Tsuna stared at her.

"Why are you here?" he exclaimed disbelievingly.

"Haru-chan!" Kyoko said, taking it all by the stride like normal.

"Since today is a half-day at my school, I decided to sneak in to help distribute the charms!"

"What?" Tsuna said eyes wide. "Sneak in? Wait, that's Nami-chu's uniform!"

"Hehe," Haru laughed, "Bianchi-san made it for me."

I tuned out the rest of the people, and rolled over to go on my back again. Two seconds later, a little black shadow came into the corner of my eye and I looked over to see Reborn. Only not as scary as last night.

"Alice."

"Reborn."

We sat in silence, and I watched Leon crawl around on Reborn's hat before he asked a question.

"Why didn't you tell us? The truth."

I blinked, facing the same situation as yesterday night as I raced through all the possibilities in my mind and fervently wished Reborn wouldn't read it. Then I settled for one word.

"Couldn't." I said with my blank face firmly on.

He smirked, and I immediately questioned if I could've given a better answer.

"You've answered all my questions."

Huh?

He hopped off the roof, and I stared at the sky listening to the sounds of Bianchi trying to force feed Tsuna food.

What just happened?

* * *

There was a letter in the mailbox, and I knew that it was the Cervello summons even before I opened it. Grey took it and read it, before sighing and giving me a lunch box to hold and ushering me out the door into the sunset. We went in car, and I watched the blurring landscape pass while trying to think of ways to approach the questions I had for Jared.

Then I saw four people walking down a side street.

"Grey, stop here. I want to walk with them."

Grey looked to the left, and saw them. He sighed, before holding out the lunch box. I took it with a laugh and I was out, waving at Grey. He nodded, watching me walk towards them before driving off.

I joined them with a jog, and they all nodded at me (Yamamoto smiling) and we walked together, with me feeling a bit swamped with all the tall silent people around me.

"Everyone!" We all looked backwards to see Basil running towards us. We stopped, and I grinned at the other short person in the group.

"You're not with Tsuna?" Yamamoto asked, after letting him settle down a bit to breathe.

"No, I was getting in touch with my team-mates in Italy."

"How'd it go?"

"Not good..." he said with a sigh. "Like Dino-dono hath said, my master and the rest of my team are still trapped inside the Vongola Headquarters."

Gokudera just huffed. "And Bucking Bronco can't interfere. Whatever happens, we can't expect reinforcements..."

I just continued walking forward, and I heard Yamamoto's smile in his voice.

"What? Tsuna's going to win, you know."

"Of course he is!" Gokudera yelled, "No-one else is as fit to be Vongola Boss as he is!"

"Well... I heard this from Dino-dono..."

They were getting a bit far away, so I stopped and leaned against a convenient wall. What to do? I couldn't find one tactful way to approach the subject with Jared. I was more of a blunt person, I was no good in diplomatic stuff!

Suddenly, there were no voices, and I tuned in just to see Gokudera scowling at Basil.

"Listen newcomer," he said to him, "Juudaime is a person so great that he has surpassed greatness. Only those who understand him will get it."

I mentally chuckled. What right did Gokudera have to say Basil was a newcomer?

"Huh?" Basil said, understandably confused.

"Haha!" Yamamoto laughed. "I'm not sure what it is about his greatness," he said, "well it's like it's so obvious that it's easy to miss?"

"You're not making sense as all, baseball freak!"

"Well, in the beginning there were times when I couldn't tell if Sawada was great or not. But that's also because his ordinariness is simply not ordinary!" Ryohei said, smiling. "Right, Bright?"

I looked up at him in surprise, before nodding in agreement. Well, it was pretty true. Of course, him being a Mafia boss is nothing ordinary, but titles aside Tsuna was a pretty ordinary guy.

I continued walking again, just for them to outrun me as they rounded the corner into Nami-chu. There was a light, and as I walked behind them a wave of hot air came at me. A dust cloud, with one person in the middle.

"Xanxus..." I muttered. The others just hardened their eyes, and I looked around for Jared. He wasn't there, or not visible. I scowled.

"Our opponent seems ready," Reborn said, squeaky voice coming from somewhere out front. We looked, and Tsuna was standing there next to him.

"Xanxus." Tsuna said seriously, looking at him determinedly.

Xanxus just smirked.

"So you came, trash."

They stared at each other, before the Cervello suddenly jumped down from the school roof too land softly in between them.

"We have been expecting you. Then for the Guardians for Sawada's side," they said looking over us, "Storm, Sun, Star, Rain and the Mist Guardians are all here."

Tsuna looked over his shoulder to see Chrome, holding tightly to her shoulder bag.

"Dokuro!"

"Chrome."

She smiled nervously, before standing coming to stand beside me.

"The only ones left are Cloud and Lightning." They said, and right after they said it footsteps came from the left to reveal Hibari. He ignored all of us and just addressed the Cervello.

"What do you want?"

"Hibari-san!" Tsuna cried, but he got ignored just as usual. "Err, what do I want?"

I yawned, and wandered backwards to survey the field. Xanxus was standing on the field ignored, but he didn't seem to mind, his eyes closed with a smirk on his face. Belphegor, Levi, Mammon and even Lussuria were there, on the other side. Jared was there too, partly behind Lussuria's bed, cloak firmly in place.

Lambo was being held behind Tsuna and the rest, a few metres away from me. He was wheezing, his lungs seemingly struggling to breathe. I looked at him in concern. That oxygen was practically the only thing keeping him breathing...

"Please give us back the Rings," the Cervello's voice intruded on my thoughts. I silently walked forward past a loud Ryohei and gave her my Ring. She nodded at me, before putting it into a box and handing me a wristband. I grimaced at it, before putting it on.

I automatically slid it in place, and not interested in listening them talk anymore, I headed out towards the pool.

Yet another fight.

When will it end?

I rounded the corner just in time to see a Cervello jump up a tower and deposit a Ring on top of a huge tower thing before jumping down and running away. It was huge. That thing. It was in the middle of the pool, but even with it being one and a half metres lower in the ground it was taller than four of me.

"—What's with this pole?—" Ryohei's tinny voice came from my wrists.

"—We've set up a pole at each of the battle fields. The top of each pole contains the Ring of the same type.–"

I just stared up it, preparing for the pain to come. How long would it take to take the Ring before Jared did, get down, and hold him down so I could question him?

"—You are all free to do so. That is... if you are able to. –"

Suddenly, the wristband stuck something into my wrist and I braced myself for pain.

One second, two seconds...

Jared fell to the ground, and I found I was still standing, pain-free.

Then I remembered that I was technically not as human as the rest, and poison didn't affect me.

"Well, that's good." I muttered. "Time to climb up."

I narrowed my eyes at the tower, before hooking onto it and started to climb up while listening to the running dialogue between Tsuna and the Cervello. Tsuna had acquired the chain when I reached my Ring and put it into the indent (even if it didn't affect me, better safe than sorry) and jumping down.

Fumbling with the Ring because of my bandaged hands, I turned to Jared holding the Ring in front of his face.

"I'll let you have the antidote if you answer my questions."

He just breathed, panting from the poison. I sat in front of him, cross-legged, putting the Ring in front of his eyes as an incentive to answer. Damn tact, I was going blunt.

"First question: were you on the mission two years ago?"

A few seconds passed until there was a grunt.

"Yes."

"Who employed you?"

"Are you stupid?" He coughed, and I sighed expecting this. As if my answers would come so easily.

It was dark, and a wind had started blowing. I put a strand of wayward hair behind my ear and leaned forward. A leaf scuttled over his cloaked back before blowing away, and I looked at him again, phrasing it in my brain.

"Information sources told me you were replacing your brother's jobs who disappeared two years ago, yes?"

I didn't wait for his answer and continued.

"There was a rumour that you were a normal boy just two years ago, and coincidentally your first mission was also two years ago. Your brother had protected you before then."

He stiffened, and I ignored that and continued on.

"Another rumour was about how were working under a man who promised to find your lost brother for you, training you and putting you on hard missions. You disappeared half a year ago, but you've worked hard to get into Varia as a prospective Guardian. Working up the ranks in the Varia under a fake name must've been hard in only half a year, wouldn't it, Jared?"

He was silent, and I looked up at the sky and continued talking, knowing he would crack soon.

"Then the question would be your motivation. What motivated you?"

I eyed him.

"The answer was obvious of course. Your lost brother. But who dangled the bait of finding him? Your employer. My ultimate question still is…" I paused. "Your employer. Who is he?"

He was shivering, his face hidden by his cloak. But his answer was clear.

"I will never tell _you, _Brighteye." He spat.

"Ah, that's not good." I said blandly. "By how you said it, it would seem as if you have a grudge on Brighteyes or something. But whatever. What I truly want to say is this."

I leaned forward yet again, and moved his hood off his face so he could see me. Or maybe my annoyingly glow-in-the-dark eyes.

"Why are you working so hard for a lost brother who is dead?"

* * *

**Mystery thickens, and I'm too tired to think.**

**Bye bye, now I can only hope those extended responses that the English teacher wants miraculously finish by themselves. ^^"**


	25. You just have to go with the flow

**Oh crap, this is more than 10000 words, which is approximately twenty-seven pages. Oh gosh, I'm mad. Please don't expect all chapters to be this long because I certainly wouldn't be able to do this every week. _**

**I hope you all enjoy this! XD Thank you, reviewers, and my sister for beta-ing! I hope all of you in America are fine; watching the world news makes me worried. **

**Anyway, please enjoy!**

* * *

He went still. Still as stone. Stiller than stone, even. I frowned, and prodded him a little with a chopstick. Still nothing. I grew worried. Was he having premature problems with his poisoning?

An explosion from the left told me I had to hurry this up but, I scowled to myself, how could I hurry up a person who seemed to have problems to even breathe? Maybe I should give him the antidote and question him then. Yeah, that sounded good…

I inserted the ring into his bracelet thing, and he immediately threw me over and put a knife to my neck.

Damn. Even when I knew that those assassin types were hardy…

I was internally sighing to myself when I jabbed him in the stomach with the chopstick I had in my hand. He winced, and I took the opportunity to slide under him arm and out, getting myself into a ready position.

He did the same.

"Well?"

He simply brushed his cloak to free the dirt. Then he looked straight at me, smiling in a carefree way. Not like a person who was just told the brother he had been trying to regain was dead.

"It's simple, isn't it? You're lying." He continued smiling, before calmly starting towards me, finished with brushing off his cloak.

I blinked. That sure wasn't what I was expecting. A bit of yelling, a bit of denial. Definitely not this.

"L-lying?" I spluttered. "Why would I lie about something like this?"

"Because all Brighteyes lie."

"But I'm telling the truth!"

He only raised an eyebrow. "What's the point of telling me that when I think you're lying?"

To my annoyance, it made sense.

"What can I tell you to make you see that I'm telling the truth? Brighteye credibility is already one of the best there is!"

"You could've just brain-washed all of them."

"You're not making sense," I retorted while backing around the pool so he wouldn't get too close. "How could we brain-wash all the people who employ us? It'll just be bad publicity if it doesn't work."

He scowled and lunged. I back pedalled faster. "My employer is a man that was trusted deeply by my brother, and therefore I trust him over all else. It was he that told me Brighteyes were liars before this mission; he has never been wrong."

I frowned to myself, already getting a headache. I had the sudden overwhelming urge to bash my head to a wall somewhere, but he was closing in fast.

Why were things always so complicated when it came to me, us, Brighteyes in general? I sighed a bit, and looked up to the orange flame users flying above us. Why couldn't I be Tsuna, bash up people first and get the whole back story later? It would be a heck lot easier. But I guess, as I stared at Jared, I wasn't buff enough anyway.

Better keep to the mind games.

"Two years ago, your brother was murdered by poison and found washed up on a bank of a river in Italy with his face burnt off presumably after death. We DNA tested him, and found he matched some records we had, of a Hitman who was pretty infamous. Your brother, Red."

He snorted.

"My brother wouldn't be killed so easily. He could recognise nearly all poisons, it's part of our course. He was top in the poison field, so what you said doesn't make sense."

"The river he was washed down had four mansions along it, as well as a few villages. It would've been practically impossible to track who had dumped his body in the river, if you didn't add to the fact that he could have been just carried there. But this is worth a shot; ever heard of the Azurro River?"

"Yes, but it is a pretty big river in Italy."

I sighed, and stopped backtracking.

"I'm not getting through to you, am I?"

"No."

He lunged, and I didn't sidestep fast enough, his knives slashing three gouges into my arm. I cursed, before doing some fancy footwork that let me get to his side and drove the side of my palm in the junction of his head and neck. He stumbled and fainted, and I didn't bother trying to catch him.

"Grey," I spoke into my phone.

"Yes, Miss?"

"When the battle's over, collect Jared's body and bring him to the apartment. Remember to tie him up. Not too tight, of course."

"Yes, Miss."

A flicker on my wrist screen caught my attention, and I suddenly I was staring at a close up of Hibari's face. And if I held it close to my ear, I could hear people's reactions.

"-_That guy…-" _Shamal muttered.

"_-Hibari-dono!-" _Basil shouted. I smiled to myself as I started walking around the building in front of me. The Cervello was just as shocked for the first time showing some emotion. Reborn started his reasoning: out loud of course. Reborn couldn't ever keep his genius revelations to himself.

"_-Hibari struck down the Cloud Guardian pole and cured himself.-"_

"_-Impossible. The Death Hitter's poison is so lethal that it even stops a wild elephant in its tracks.-"_

"_-It's the persistent power of a person who hates being restrained… that's why he is the aloof cloud that protects the family from an independent standpoint, who nothing can bind.-"_

I chuckled. Reborn's dramatic Vongola weather references yet again. I rounded the corner, just to get a face full of Belphegor's knives. As if I was going to walk between a battle _Hibari _was in. I would get pulverised. When I was about to turn around, I got another unexpected face full of Gokudera.

"What, Gokudera?"

"Freaky eyes! Did that Cloud guy free you as well?" He eyed my bleeding arm with a curiosity.

I shook my head. "I freed myself. But why are you loitering here? Get to Lambo, he's in danger."

Gokudera just cursed and started running towards the other school building where Lambo's battle had been.

"_-Hey, was that…-"_

"_-H-how?-" _Was the Cervello's stutter. _"-The Death Hitter's effect has never been questioned, how can she be moving as well?"_

She? That meant Chrome or me. Since Chrome didn't have resistance to poisons… Me?

I was suddenly staring at a close up of the back of my head on the tiny wrist screen. I turned around slowly, and the head on the screen also turned around slowly. But it seemed as if the camera was sick of me slowly turning around and closed in on my tower instead. I used the opportunity to run towards the field in front of the school.

"_-It seems that Alice climbed the tower and healed herself-"_ Reborn said, and I was surprised to hear Reborn sounded surprised. Strange. "_-It seems she had anticipated the use of poison and reached the Ring with its attack fully anticipated. That's why she is the Star, the one who possess a million eyes, watching and knowing everything, protecting the Family from afar.-"_

"_-Impossible! There are no information leaks in our organisation!-"_

Reborn just cut them off. _"-Their relationships resemble the weather they're named after. For example, when it's cloudy there will be a chance a storm will occur."_

And right after Reborn said that, explosions sounded all across the roof that Gokudera had been racing towards. I smirked, holding my bleeding arm closer to my chest and continued running.

"-_See? Storms and Clouds go hand-in-hand.-" _Reborn said, and I could already imagine the annoying smirk he would have on. I reached Ryohei by then, but knowing Gokudera he would pose a bit before really fighting Levi. I got Ryohei's Ring, and inserted it into his wrist band.

"Thanks, Bright." He said brightly, stretching a bit. I shook my head and plopped myself next to him, a bit woozy from blood-loss. He looked worriedly at my arm. "Are you okay?"

"Um, yeah."

"Do you mind if I ripped your jacket a little? I don't have clean bandages with me, sorry." He laughed a bit, before starting to rip my jacket without my permission anyway. I let him bandage up my arm, a bit tighter than I would've liked.

"_-Just like how the Sun and the Star are practically brothers.-" _Reborn's annoying voice came through the tiny speaker. He shouldn't be focusing on us, he should've been analysing Hibari's fight or something! I'm sure it would be a lot more interesting than Ryohei bandaging my arm.

"_-Ryohei-dono! Alice-dono!-" _Basil's voice came through the speaker with relief, before Reborn really did start analysing Hibari's fight. Ryohei was focusing on the second of my cuts on my arm, eyebrows furrowed with concentration. I tuned out Lussuria's pitiful keens and looked up at Tsuna who was flying around clashing with Xanxus, two orange flames in a dark sky.

"I hope Tsuna gets through this."

"Sawada?" Ryohei growled, having difficulty tying a knot with the bulky bandages. "Of course he'll win. I won't forgive him if he doesn't. If he gets struck down, he'll just get up at the count of nine."

I grinned.

Tsuna was lucky to have such good friends. We heard footsteps, and we both tensed up until we saw Gokudera's silver mop of hair bobbing in the dark towards us.

"Turf top, are you alright…?"

"Oh, octopus-head!" Ryohei grinned, by now finishing tying the knot to my third gash. "I was just helping Bright here."

"Good job, freaky eyes."

"Hrmph." I grunted. "No problem."

"But what was that explosion just then?" Ryohei asked Gokudera.

"Juudaime got hit, but he's okay. He's going to thrash that Xanxus bastard, so we have to win on our front too!" He grinned at us, before putting down Lambo and his oxygen tank.

"It seems you're both fine. I'm going to rescue the others as well. Are you still feeling a bit dizzy?"

Ryohei nodded. "Yeah. Oh! And if you're going to save the others, take our Rings with you too." Gokudera accepted the Thunder and Sun Rings, before turning to me. I shook my head.

"No, I'll keep mine. Don't worry about it getting to Tsuna, I'll manage."

Gokudera frowned, before shrugging. "If you say so. Take care of the stupid cow for me." I watched as Ryohei took Lambo, before looking at Lussuria.

"And can you save him too?" Ryohei nodded towards the the bed, where Lussuria was whining about how it hurt. Gokudera huffed.

"I guess Juudaime would do the same."

Lussuria instantly stopped talking about how much it hurt. "Thank you, octopus-head!"

Gokudera visibly bristled. "I won't save you now!"

"Ah! No! Save me!"

I grinned, before staggering up. "I've got to do my rounds as well, to check if things are going well."

"What rounds?"

I just kept grinning at him. "Guess."

Gokudera did a 'tch' at me, before running away towards a random school building. I apologised to Ryohei for using him to help myself up, before telling him to go smash the gym when he was ready. He looked at me in confusion, before smiling and yelling an EXTREME! For what, I don't know.

Now, where was Yamamoto's fight?

I shuffled, cursing the weird body condition that I had.

Strong foreign substances couldn't affect most Brighteye's bodies because of how our bodies were practically from another world anyway. Poison's work is to kill us by messing up some organ or function, so that's why it won't work because our organs were physically 'tougher' than normal people's. But it's our souls that make our body work.

Now, it's our soul's memories that let our body work as it should. My heart beats, because my soul remembering my previous body's heart beating. If I lose too much blood, my body would faint, because it remembers that's how it should be. But no virus or bacteria is the same; even if the symptoms are the same, viruses and bacteria are all different in different worlds. Therefore, no strong antibodies to fight the diseases, we Brighteyes get sick easily.

So, even when technically if I lost too much blood it wouldn't harm me much (let me die, for example), I would still faint. So I was getting worried when blood started showing through the really bulky bandages that Ryohei tied on my arm. It was practically five centimetres thick but somehow it was still bleeding through?

Which reminded me, how much blood could I lose anyway?

I was pondering this question when I saw Hibari leaning against a pole.

As expected, I thought wryly. Even when he's bleeding half to death and knowing walking is really _not_ a good idea, he just has to try.

"Err, Hibari."

His eyes snapped towards me, and he immediately stopped leaning against the pole. "Sunglasses."

I wondered when he'll stop calling me sunglasses.

"You shouldn't move around with those injuries," I said to him, slowly shuffling closer as I eyed his makeshift bandage soaked with blood. It was nearly worse than mine. He instantly snapped up and started walking, only to collapse onto another pillar after five steps or so. I whacked my forehead.

I should've known better than to tell him straight off, with him disliking authority figures so much (unless, of course, the authority figure was himself).

So reverse psychology?

"_You should walk."_

"_Hn. don't tell me not to do."_

_He walks away._

Nah, that won't work. What about insulting his pride or something?

"_You're too weak to sit."_

_Instant glare, and he immediately tries to bite me to death._

That wouldn't work either…

"Sit down whenever you want to." I told him instead, and sat down myself. He eyed me, then my arm, before doing his sniff and leaning against the pole, still not sitting down. I bet his pride wouldn't let him or something. "It isn't your turn to fight yet."

"How do you know?" He asked after a pause.

"I know." I shrugged, and he just stared at me with hard eyes before closing them again.

"Hn. I still have to clean up the school grounds."

"Don't worry, the the Sun ring holders are fine, I knocked my opponent out, Yamamoto's saved by you, Gokudera saved Lambo and is saving Chrome with Yamamoto right now. And you know Tsuna," I said, looking at the mini screen on my wrist and the close-up of Tsuna's face, "he's fighting Xanxus."

A beat of silence, then he slid down.

We sat there in silence, me watching Xanxus call Tsuna 'trash' over and over again, and Hibari looking at the sky, seemingly contemplating.

It was Xanxus's scream that told me we should start moving.

"Hey, you strong enough to get up?"

Hibari glared at me, and gracefully stood up, as if he wasn't bleeding everywhere. Okay then… I stood up as well, way more clumsily, and started walking where Tsuna would be; the huge field in the middle of the school. Hibari walked slightly ahead, as if he couldn't bear to follow someone else.

Probably couldn't, if it was him.

* * *

"_Bright said to go smash the Gym when I didn't feel dizzy anymore…" Ryohei muttered. "But she doesn't seem the type to use words like 'smash' so maybe she meant to blow the whole Gym away. Yeah! Wow, what EXTREME-ness! I should recruit her to the boxing club!"_

"_Bright said?" Colonello questioned._

"_Yes. That's what Ryohei calls Alice."_

_Reborn smirked, and tilted his fedora over his eyes._

"_Just as how the Guardian of the Sun guards the Family with his body, the Guardian of the Star does the opposite." Basil and the others shot a confused look at him. "Star Guardians protect the family from afar. You could say that they are the perfect team."_

_All of them looked at Ryohei disbelievingly, thinking of how Alice and Ryohei would be a perfect team. They were so opposite, loud and soft, bright and slightly gloomy, extreme and… lethargic._

"_The sun is," Reborn continued, "a star after all."_

_Ryohei readied himself, breathing in and out to calm himself and prepare his Maximum Cannon. _

"_Maximum CANNON!" Ryohei shouted, punching the wall, and suddenly everything in front of him blew away, destroying Mammon's world in the gym and his illusions. The chill from the night air combined with the dust of the rubble, and momentarily disorientated, Gokudera heaved himself under a slab of concrete._

"_You okay?" He called to Yamamoto._

_He got a cough for a response, and then a quick smile. "Yeah." He looked around, "But what was that? The whole gym was blown away."_

"_That blow… could it be?" Gokudera thought aloud, seeing a silhouette through the dust. "You're…"_

"_Sorry." Ryohei said calmly, "I hate being dull." He rubbed his wrist, while grinning at Gokudera and Yamamoto. "I'm glad you're safe."_

"_Safe! There are other ways of saving people, you know!" Gokudera immediately started raging, "What if we were blown away as well?"_

"_Ah, Bright said to smash the gym, so I thought that meant literally smashing the gym, you know?"_

"_You!"_

"_Now, now, it's fine isn't it? He saved us after all."_

"_Mmm, Yamamoto's right."_

"_I don't want to hear you say that!" Gokudera continued yelling. Why didn't the jocks get it? Chrome suddenly drooped, and Yamamoto looked at her in alarm._

"_Hey, hang in there!"_

"_How is she?"_

"_She received the antidote, so she should be fine." It was about then that they heard Mammon and Belphegor's voice. They immediately readied themselves._

"_You were still alive!"_

* * *

"You still have your Ring." Hibari suddenly broke the silence. I held back my surprise at him actually _talking_ to me, and answered.

"The Star Ring isn't really required when the Succession starts. It's just there for when one needs a Ring to even out the chances." Sensing a hint of confusion, and knowing Hibari was too prideful to ask, I continued without prompting. "There are seven Vongola Rings, an odd number so that if there ever is a fight there will be a majority. But adding the Star Ring, there are eight."

I held up my Ring. "It's not needed in succession. Even its pattern is different to the other rings. This Ring is a Ring that watches from the outside, and joins the one that wins. In the chain, there are only six slots."

That's what the research came up with, anyway.

No response from the front except for a quiet grunt. We were nearly there, Yamamoto's fighting place was a bit far away from where Tsuna would've been. Then Hibari suddenly leaned against a wall.

And instead of asking a stupid question like 'are you okay?' I leaned against a wall too.

He started glaring at me (maybe he thought I was pitying him or something) before he saw I was pretty much in a bad shape too. The blood flow didn't seem to stop, just slowed down, and I was pretty sure a person wasn't supposed to lose so much blood. The bandages were dripping by now. Clutching it seemed, made it feel a little better, so I clutched at my arm near desperately. He slid his eyes away again.

And somehow, we wound up in silence again. It always came to that, just a comfortable silence. Silences on the roof, silences on the battlefield. Kind of funny really.

"_Stupid voluntary love isn't what I want! I want the position of boss!" _Xanxus yelled at Tsuna around the corner. I sighed, and clutched my arm closer to my chest. Why were there so many acceptance issues in Katekyo?

It was true that Xanxus didn't want the love of the Ninth. He wanted his own recognition that he was worthy to be his son, he was worthy to accept the Ninth's love. He grew up thinking he was superior, and suddenly it was torn away by a few documents, suddenly not the son of the man he most respected. Suddenly his father was on the pinnacle of a mountain, and he was the trash under it.

I sighed, before struggling to stand up without collapsing. I knew we had to get going if Hibari was going to make his entrance in the grand final scene of the Sky Battle.

Hibari seemed to sense my mood change, and he got up from leaning on the wall first, walking with an uneven gait towards the battle, walking a little quicker when he realised I was following him. I grinned to myself.

Was he worried?

Nah.

"We won't let you!" Gokudera's shout came after multiple explosions. The flames from Tsuna's Hyper Dying Will mode was the only thing that was clear in the haze of dust left by the explosions, but I was trailing behind Hibari when he strode through the dust screen.

"Now we can finally settle the things," Hibari said to Belphegor, and I could see his blood-thirsty smile already. I mentally sighed and just followed him.

"What are you saying? You're wounded all over. There's no mistake, you'll be killed." Belphegor laughed, standing in front of Xanxus with his knives out. It was the first time I saw Xanxus properly, I reflected, and he definitely wasn't in the best shape.

His clothes dirty with mud, he was panting from exertion and there were barely any flames left. But the glare and the presence were unmistakable. It was Xanxus, and even when he was on his knees it seemed as if he was dominating the whole field.

What a presence… I couldn't help but understand why the Varia, with each of their strange traits, followed him as leader. Even now, when they could trump him easily, didn't question his orders.

I stopped following Hibari and started walking towards the observation box, knowing it was only on the other side of the school building in front of me. Ignoring the people who were starting to argue, and the forces I knew would inevitably come, I just staggered onward.

"I'll just blow it apart, hey!"

"That's pointless," the Cervello told him through the huge screen and its speakers, "it is set to explode when attacked from the inside."

"What?"

"We can't lift a finger."

It slowly closed in on the box, and watched through bleary eyes at my friends trumping all the Varia. Even Squalo's shouting seemed kind of distant…

"Alice. Why are you here? You're supposed to be next to Tsuna."

"I have no place there. Anyway, this shouldn't hold against outside attacks, should it?"

"Ah!" Basil said happily, "that way we can help!"

"No, it isn't needed."

"Huh?" He looked at me in confusion, and I only nodded at the screen. The Cervello started talking, right on time.

"Due to Xanxus-sama's disqualification, the winner of the Sky Match is Sawada Tsunayoshi. Thus, the ones who will become the successors of the Vongola will be Sawada Tsunayoshi and his seven Guardians."

I laughed a bit, while I tinkered with the system. If I used excessive force, I could set off the bombs and that wouldn't benefit anybody.

"Done." I breathed out, feeling the hum of the machinery clicking off. Leon turned into some goggle thing, and finally Reborn nodded. Smiling, I got up slowly and shuffled away.

"Miss, I've already carried Rivincita-san into the apartment and tied him up."

"That's good."

Then Grey bent over, and offered to piggy-back me. I grinned and fell forward.

"Good job today, Miss."

"Yeah."

And I think I blacked out, even as I listened to the panicked screams of Gokudera panicking over _Tsuna_ blacking out, Yamamoto laughing just like normal, Ryohei saying something that naturally annoyed Gokudera, and passing a Hibari who was heading to the Reception room of the school.

I fainted laughing.

Why were they all so crazy?

* * *

Jared glared at me from the third chair he had escaped from.

"Why won't you just listen?" I said exasperatedly, waving weakly around.

"I will never listen to a _Brighteye."_

"Then I'll just shove you into my beloved computer room bound in freaking _chains_ with the sound on max so you can listen to all the evidence, okay? I'll leave the screen on too, so you can watch until you're satisfied! Grey will watch you."

"Where are you going then?" He snarled.

"A party."

He looked positively surprised. I snorted. "I'm human too, you know. I have friends. Bye."

And I left, leaving Grey to chain him to the computer room.

* * *

"Ah, Alice!"

I grinned at Yamamoto, then Yamamoto's dad, and everyone sitting around waiting for the main event to appear. Gokudera was fussing over the decorations so everything would be absolutely perfect for his Juudaime, Reborn was busy helping himself to some green tea on his cushions with a Vongola Ring Box in front of him.

"Alice, have you recovered?"

"For the most part." I grinned, glad that Reborn seemed to have set the Vongola Ninth thing to the back of his mind. It'll probably come to haunt me later, but for now… it was all good.

"Do you have your Ring?"

"Yeah."

I fumbled for a bit, the thick bandages on my arms and my hands making it _really_ difficult to do anything really, but I eventually got it out of my pocket. Reborn smirked, and told me to put it on my neck. I asked why.

"Because I would like to see Dame-Tsuna's reaction when he comes in."

I complied, since I was liked to watch Tsuna's over-reactions as well.

"Alice! We haven't talked for awhile!"

Turning around to see Dino, I scratched the back of my head. "Well, if you ever pop by again I should tell you Grey bought another five locks for the fridge. You wouldn't be able to plunder it again," I stated blankly.

Dino sighed in disappointment.

"But your food was so nice… Want to drink some tea to catch up on the times?"

So we sat down and chatted. Dino had been up to no good as usual, from what I heard from him. And he left poor Romario to arrange someone to do his paperwork when he fled, I mean, came to Japan to help Tsuna. Dino was laughing sheepishly at my disapproving looks when, in no time at all, Tsuna came in and they all popped the streamer things at the same time. Dino wasn't entrusted with one because of his lack of coordination skills and me because of my fingers.

As everyone swarmed towards Tsuna, I looked at the sushi sadly. I wanted to eat but the darn chopsticks…

"Alice! I got you a spoon!" Yamamoto said, waltzing over happily. I took it with wonder.

"You should be an angel, Yamamoto."

He looked confused. "Haha?"

I started shoving my mouth with sushi, with Yamamoto's dad nodding with approval. "Yes, yes, eat up!" He said happily, piling more sushi onto my plate when it started depleting.

"Hehe… Alice?"

I choked mid-bite thoroughly not expecting anyone to talk to me, and Tsuna pounded me on the back until I coughed up the hunk of rice that had lodged into my windpipe.

"Tsuna." I said while wiping my mouth, embarrassed. I looked around to see Gokudera with happy tears. I raised an eyebrow at him, and Tsuna only shrugged. "How are you?"

"Ah, I have muscle pains all over!" He groaned, rubbing his shoulders with a grimace. I grinned, and he shot me a look asking why I was grinning. I shrugged, before just continued spooning sushi. Tsuna grinned at me, before his smile dimmed a bit at my hands and arm. I stopped him before he could even start.

"Look, Tsuna." I said with my mouth full. He looked, and I swallowed and sipped some tea to help it down. "This celebration is all for you."

I leaned backwards, and crossed my legs while I held the traditional Japanese tea cup in my hands. The heat from the tea seeped into my hands, and I was seriously content.

"Aren't you glad to have so many friends?"

Tsuna's face settled into a grin of his own.

"Yeah."

We watched the crazy antics of all the people for awhile, Tsuna actually getting to eat one piece of sushi before Haru got everyone's attention. I turned around and continued eating sushi while everyone's attention was away.

There were so many food stealers it wasn't funny.

I looked backwards just in time to see the gaudy Champion Belt given to Tsuna, and Kyoko telling Tsuna congratulations in a totally adorable way. Grinning, I shuffled closer and gave Tsuna a little nudge. He stumbled closer to Kyoko, nearly falling on her.

"Hiie!"

"Tsuna-kun, are you okay?" Kyoko asked with her face really close to his. His face turned tomato.

"Y-yeah!"

He scrambled up, only to fall flat on his butt again and he shot a desperate/exasperated look at the person who let him go into his predicament in the first place and widened his eyes at me. I shot him a thumbs up and a wink, and he blushed even more. He got up, and was about to say something to Kyoko when Bianchi presented some purple-fumish food to them.

"If you have time to be mushy, eat up."

I laughed, abandoning the two to it before asking Yamamoto's dad to pack a bento.

"What for?"

"Giving it to someone who didn't come today. He fought too, see, but he didn't come."

"Ah, okay then!"

He happily gave me a bento, and I left after Tsuna chased after Lancia and Basil. Heading towards the school with a bento over my right arm (the left arm was the one with the three gouges) and a thermos shakily held in my left, I went straight towards the Reception room.

"Kusakabe." I greeted, and he turned around to smile.

"Ah, Bright-san. What business do you have here?"

"I guessed that Hibari turned down the invitation to the party, so I brought some food over." I held up the bento. "He likes traditional Japanese food right?"

"How did you know that?" Kusakabe asked even as he took it. I sighed in relief with the weight off my arm.

"He seemed the type. Now bye." I turned around to nearly run smack dab into another person. I looked up to see… Hibari.

"Hibari."

"Sunglasses. Why are you here so late at school?" He held up his tonfa. "For breaking school rules, you'll be bitten to death."

I hastily backtracked.

"Uh, I came to…"

"She came to deliver some food, Hibari-san." Kusakabe said stoically. Hibari stopped in mid-lunge, and I stopped in mid-sprint.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, Hibari-san." He nodded, and I wondered at his pompadour. How did it keep its shape?

Hibird chirped happily at me, and flew to nuzzle my cheek. I smiled at it, and it nodded at me before flying back to nestle in Hibari's hair. In the mean time, Hibari had already opened the box and snapped apart the chopsticks to eat a piece of sushi.

He looked at me. "This is nice. Did you make this?"

I nearly laughed, but I managed to keep it down to a wry smile. "No, I can't cook for my life."

He smirked. "Oh, really?"

Just when I was wondering over the complex concept of Hibari and I talking to each other civilly in an enjoyable conversation when he couldn't even stand the sight of me when I started school, he turned away.

"I'll tell Yamamoto's father that you liked it."

He looked over his shoulder just when Hibird started chirping the school song. "I'll let you go this time."

Oh, the breaking the school rules thing. I nodded and gave an awkward wave. Then I left hoping the gaze I felt on my back wasn't Hibari staring at me. He stared at people a lot these days.

* * *

"You got it yet?"

Jared only glared at me and the bowl of chicken soup in my hands. I sighed, and put it away. "Well, because of you I got an excuse to not go to my friend's graveyard 'test of courage' thing so I'm pretty much fine, but you…"

I let my head rest on the wall.

"I'll let you go then, and you can go back to your employer with your clothes bug free. You can determine for yourself from your employer if your brother is dead, okay?"

He said nothing.

"Grey."

"Yes, Miss?"

"Drive him to some remote place near the airport and let him go."

He raised his eyebrows and looked at me in his grandfatherly way.

"Are you sure, Miss?"

"Yes. And pack the chicken soup just in case he's hungry. Give him some money so he can buy a plane ticket too, if he wishes."

"Immediately, Miss."

And Jared and his accusing eyes were taken away, and I couldn't help but try and track the car by satellite.

I couldn't get the employer name after all… I stared out over the city lights, Namimori suddenly turning dark right near the edge of the horizon. That was the end of the town/city and it would lead to the mountain, that way…

Would the person try to interrupt again? Should I be more careful?

What was the next battle, anyway?

I went to the sack in the corner, the one Bill delivered and flipped through the books until I remembered. Then I groaned.

So Byakuran was next, huh…

* * *

"Class visitation!"

I just slept in class as usual, since Grey was going grocery shopping and I didn't tell him it was that day when parents came to intrude in the classroom. Well, I was pretty much looking forward to it. The end of it, that was.

"Oh, I wonder what Alice-sama's parents would be like!"

"My mom came looking like that! So embarrassing!"

"Heh, my mom and dad are both working at the family shop so they couldn't come."

"Yosh! I need to make a good impression to Kyoko-chan's mom!"

I groaned, people swamping my window seat so they could peer out the window and look at the parents who were pouring in from the school entrance.

Bored. Watching through bored eyes as the two people teasing Tsuna was chased away by the two most popular guys in the grade, Gokudera trying to blow them up, the teacher coming in early and making the students all go to their seats, parents walking in, the daily greeting, sit down…

I yawned and slept. First was maths, huh…

"Bright! BRIGHT!"

"Huh?" I jerked looked up to the teacher.

"Oh, what a bad student, she's sleeping in class!"

"Oh, she's a foreigner like that delinquent boy!"

"Oh no, I can't let my darling Kaneda-chan be in the same class as these sort of bad students!"

I raised an eyebrow at her, (she froze under my stare/glare) and then looked at Kaneda. His ears were burning red. I smirked.

The teacher was obviously embarrassed at my behaviour.

"Bright, can't you at least look like you're listening?" He said exasperatedly.

"Yes, sensei." I said flatly. And suddenly, whispers of 'oh, Alice-sama is so cool!', suddenly erupted around the room and I sighed and banged my head on the window. And the teacher, yet again obviously annoyed, asked me to answer question four.

Easy.

"Five." I said straight off the bat, wondering when he'll learn that the 'answering the question' trick would never work on either Gokudera or me.

He sighed.

"Alright then, Sawada!"

Tsuna, who had been looking at me with a smile that said _as-expected-of-Alice_ suddenly drooped.

"Y-yes, sensei?"

I escaped through the window, sensing impending doom from a short silhouette that consisted of Reborn in an old woman cosplay.

No way was I going to hang around with _Reborn_ in the classroom.

Amid the screams of disbelief from the parents at a student jumping out the window, I raced out of school, happily noticing that Hibari was on the roof and couldn't hope to reach me and bite me to death.

* * *

"There's a festival?" I said, puzzled.

"Yeah! You didn't go to the one we went last year, did you Alice-chan?" Kyoko asked, smiling. "This is a local Namimori festival though, not too big. It celebrates winter!"

"Um, but…"

"Of course, there're going to be fireworks!" Kyoko winked, and Hana looked over her shoulder.

"Just come, Alice."

I sighed.

"Okay."

"Let's all dress up in kimonos!" Kyoko said happily, already planning all this stuff that I knew I wouldn't want to be in. "And invite Tsuna-kun and the others! All Namimori would be there!"

"I'm sure he wouldn't say no if you invited him, Kyoko." I said, trying to hint to her Tsuna's feelings but she only tilted her head cutely and sent pink sparkles at me.

"Huh?"

Hana chuckled as I mumbled to the wall about Kyoko's obliviousness.

It was a good listener.

* * *

"I-I can't move, Kyoko!" I waved my bandaged hands around as I tried to take one of my normal long strides. She clucked her tongue at me, before demonstrating the smooth small steps required when you wore a kimono. She glided around, trying to teach me the art of walking around in a kimono.

I was more like an especially awkward duck.

Clattering along behind Kyoko in one of those traditional wooden clog things (I had those socks too; they were warm. Actually, the kimono was warm too, but…), the ends of my hair brushed my shoulders (it was down today, see) as I bent down.

Tried to bend down, I meant.

"I can't move in this, Kyoko!" I whined yet again as we stopped in front of Tsuna's house. To add to my depression, Tsuna and the others were all wearing normal clothes. Gokudera took one look at me and nearly cracked up.

"Haha!" He laughed, "Freaky eyes! Are you trying to look feminine?"

"Shut up, Octopus-head." I growled. "Did you gel your hair today? It seems to look more like tentacles than normal."

"Why, you!"

"Gokudera!" Tsuna tried to calm him down, before facing Kyoko and me and blushing. Heh, I grinned to myself as I nudged Kyoko forward. She shot a confused look at me, before shining the full glory of her confused smile on Tsuna. He face practically turned purple.

"Y-you look r-really nice today, Kyoko-chan!" Tsuna burst out. Kyoko took it in her stride, smiling extra wide before, amazingly, bowing delicately from the waist.

"Thank you, Tsuna-kun!"

Then Tsuna turned to me. "You look really nice too, Alice!" He said to me, a residual blush still on his cheeks from Kyoko. His cheeks were definitely pink.

I sighed, and tried to tuck those strange sleeve flaps out of the way. Kyoko frowned at me and I immediately stopped. "Err, thank you Tsuna. I feel like I can't move in this though."

Yamamoto stepped forward and clapped me on the shoulder. "But it does look good on you though! Ignore Gokudera, okay?"

"What did you say, baseball freak?"

So I toddled along, concentrating on walking at least moderately fast while listening to Kyoko chat happily to me. Haru bounced up in another kimono half-way, joining us, and suddenly Lambo popped up with I-pin and Fuuta, and well, well…

Usual Vongola family chaos.

But, I happily told I-pin in my arms, it was my festival ever. I-pin turned wide eyes at me, and I nodded.

"Yup."

And we rounded the corner towards where the festival was. It was really colourful, in a good way, exploding everywhere to become stalls that sold things from goldfish to bracelets.

"Where do you want to go?" I heard Kyoko distantly say, but I had already been picked up and swept away by the crowd. I thanked my lucky stars that I left I-pin with Haru before this.

The kimono was too restricting for its own good.

I was dropped somewhere in the middle of the festival, right next to a takoyaki store. So, clutching my purse I went into line and bought two boxes of takoyaki and settled down in a moderately less crowded corner. I watched the people pass by happily, munching on takoyaki. Swiping up the last of the sauce in my first box, I thought I heard Lambo's voice in the distance so I picked up my other box of takoyaki and went out into the bright and colourful world.

Wandering around (I mean, it wouldn't be too hard to follow Lambo's 'Bwahaha's right?) I got accidentally bumped into a store. While apologising the storekeeper (he was really nice about it, even though I nearly toppled it over) and buying some of his candy, he suddenly froze when I was in the process of giving him his money.

I gently tugged the candy packet out of his hands and put the money (and a tip) on the counter, I followed his gaze to see what had frightened him so.

And understood.

Why was Hibari bashing up a random looking thug in the middle of the street for?

I tried to slowly back away, you know, like every single other person around the area was doing but somehow his eyes shot up and he found me.

Why me? I wailed in my mind.

"Have you paid the festival toll?" His voice cut into my conscious as he towered over me.

"There was a festival toll?" I asked, then immediately cursed myself as I realised that wasn't really the best answer.

He narrowed his eyes at me, before sighing and brushing past me.

"Consider the debt half repaid." He muttered as he walked away. Debt? What debt?

…Oh, was he still going on about how I helped his arm in Mukuro's hideout? That was ages ago, wasn't it? He really didn't forget much, did he?

Just when I was about to continue stalking Lambo's elusive 'Bwahahaha's, a growl came from the direction Hibari had gone. He was actually only two steps away when I looked back, and I belated realised that the growl had come from Hibari's stomach.

I nearly laughed. Nearly. Struggling to keep my blank face, and seeing how Hibari had frozen, I held up the other takoyaki box I had been saving.

"Takoyaki?"

He probably thought he didn't have time to waste time buying food from ridiculously long lines when he had to 'keep the discipline'. He continued walking forward, ignoring my offer. His pride must've stopped him or something. I sighed, but persisted. What's with boys and their pride anyway?

As I struggled to keep up, I continued talking.

"Because I bought two boxes, but I felt full after one box and I was head-aching over I had to waste the second box. Please take it? Or I would be wasting food."

He finally stopped and turned.

"…Wasting food in Namimori is discouraged."

"Yeah." I nodded, trying to get hair out of my eyes. "So if you take the box Namimori would be better for it."

I felt like I was talking to a little kid.

He paused, before taking it and swiftly going away without giving a thank you. But then, when did he ever say thank you?

Stubborn guys and their pride. It made things so much more complicated.

Sigh. I should've just been rejoicing he hadn't bitten me to death or something.

* * *

There had been nothing else that had been significant at the festival, except for the fireworks. They were so beautiful, somehow prettier when you had fellow people watching them with you.

Then there were the crazy days; Bianchi's wedding…

"_Where have you hid Reborn?" Bianchi yelled, doing her most dangerous technique and miraculously turning everything around her, except for her dress, into poison cooking._

_I sighed._

When Nana got pick-pocketed…

"_Hyaa!" I-pin did her gyoza ken on the one of the three brothers who were trying to steal from Nana again. I was the innocent passerby this time, just trying to enjoy daily life when _they _came out and drawn me in (unfortunately, it came to me to bail a crying Tsuna out of jail)._

_I sighed._

When poor Irie Shouichi was traumatised for life

_I watched as Hibari exercised his self-centred logic._

"_Oi, Kyoya. The training's over, I don't need to fight you anymore."_

"_It doesn't matter. Today I'm going to bite you to death."_

_Watching the exchange was the easy part; but I wasn't really bothering to watch when I-pin started her Pinzu Countdown. _

_I sighed even as I ran out of breath running away._

And the day when Tsuna was trying to pass his test. Kyoko dragged me forward (I was so out of it I didn't really know what was happening. I only woke up when Kyoko accidentally grabbed my left arm where the gashes were still healing, you know?) to the principal's office.

There, she pleaded to let Tsuna and the others stay in school.

I just stood next to her being back-up. Nezu-sensei was looking at Kyoko pleased, and let Tsuna have his other chance. For him to sleep in and miss it.

"Sensei, please let him take the test again!" Kyoko pleaded the next day, her face filled with worry. And seeing her like that, I could only stand next to her and stare at Nezu-sensei in a hopefully intimidating way. It looked like it worked, with him sweating nervously under my glare. Heh, seems like these eyes have some type of use after all…

"Kyoko…" Tsuna murmured at her.

And then Reborn came and had to make it complicated.

And as usual, whenever Reborn came into the picture I hightailed right out of there. Because for some reason, whenever Reborn is involved, bombs and bullets and all this dangerous stuff get involved. It was always best to do the retreat route when it was still safe, you know?

* * *

I hung around unenthusiastically digging a hole in the courtyard. Gokudera caught me, saying something like "We all have to help Juudaime in his quest!" Or something of that sort. Then he proceeded to draft me into this digging project.

I sighed, before deeming the hole deep enough and started filling it again. I had been doing this for the past hour, digging the hole and refilling it over and over and over and over to look like I was doing something.

Yawning, I leant on the fence to take a little nap…

…And woke up to see Tsuna?

"Tsuna, why are you wearing your green love heart boxers?"

Tsuna blushed deep red.

"Err, I mean, umm, Dying will and…"

I cut him off. "Oh, you found the time capsule? That's good. Then I'll be off then."

I slowly walked away before Yamamoto could say something like team spirit and drag me in, or Gokudera saying we should show our eternal loyalty to Juudaime so we should help him…

Going down the street, I saw Nezu-sensei slowly walking down another avenue looking depressed. I stared at his back.

Maybe I could make use of him…

"Nezu Dohachiro." I called out. He turned, and was surprised to see me.

"Oh, Bright. Are you going to laugh in my face now?" He tried to sneer but failing.

"You have a family, right?"

He looked taken aback at my response to his question. I didn't know why he wasn't taking his car, but it might be fate or something. If things were to go as awry, I need back-ups. The plot must continue, and no random mysterioius person was going to get in my way of completing the mission selected for me to get to Heaven.

"Yes." He answered cautiously.

"Then come with me. I can get rid of any fraud charges on your name and get you another job, only I will be your new employer."

He blinked, and I turned away, calling Grey to get the car. When Grey pulled up and opened the door for me, I waved Nezu inside. He was mostly silent throughout the ride, until he saw where I was living at.

"Is that…" he gasped out.

"Yes."

And when I lead him to the penthouse, he finally turned to me and asked the question I had been preparing for.

"Just who are you, Bright?"

I put on the enigmatic smile that I had tried so hard to train up.

"Your future employer."

Then I led him in. "Now, Nezu, I know your history. You'll definitely be put up to fraud charges and never get a job for the rest of your life if this gets out but I know how to cover it up. If you accept my offer, you'll get the same salary as you would've got from Nami-chu as well as your extra salaries as a teacher."

"A teacher?" He questioned, a bit dazed.

"I want you to become a teacher at a school called Shimon."

"Huh?"

"Yes, and be a nice teacher. No ranting like you did in Nami-chu, okay?"

"Err," he responded, overwhelmed. I didn't give him time to recover, talking my mouth away.

"That's nice. Now, it's a good deal. You'll get double the salary, if you add the salary I give you as well as the salary from your Shimon job."

"A-and if I accept, when will I start?"

"Tomorrow." I said offhandedly, waving at Grey to make the arrangement. He put on his exasperated face before nodding and going to the phone to pull a few strings. "You will surely be sacked, of course, by Nami-chu by now. By going to Shimon, no-one will know you as well as you can keep your reputation, okay?"

He just nodded.

"Just give me reports on these students," I spread seven pictures on the table, "fortnightly to me. That is the only requirement."

"What if I refuse?" He asked, as if fearing the answer.

"Simple," I said quickly, wanting to get this over and done with. Nezu hadn't been my favourite teacher after all, "You have no future. Here is the number to Grey's phone; call him by twelve midnight and we will promptly drive you to your new house in Shimon and start your job."

I never even considered him refusing. And by shooting my mouth off, I knew I finished this whole business and evilly shoved on Grey the consequences when he left.

Phew. Done. Finished.

Why was I getting so nervous again?

Ah, because I wasn't following plot.

Whatever.

"Miss," Grey said, already snapping his phone shut saving Nezu's number. "You have some weird mail. Something about a Vongola Style party for Nana-san the day after next."

"Oh, is it that?" I sighed out. I seemed to be sighing so much these days. "Hey Grey, I'm sorry."

"What, Miss?"

"I keep pushing stuff on you, don't I?"

"Its okay, Miss. It's my job. Besides, I like it. Being busy is what I do best."

"Then you won't mind me asking you to buy a cake?"

"No."

And he left to buy a cake. Good old Grey.

* * *

"Alice!"

I looked up from my book, surprised that there was anyone here. This spot in the park was pretty secluded; Fuuta had ranked it as top two in calm peaceful spots to relax in Namimori.

"Tsuna," I said simply. Then I smiled slightly at him before closing my book. "What's up?"

"I was babysitting Lambo and he suddenly ran away. Ahaha…" He laughed awkwardly, patting his hands on his pants nervously. I stood up with a grin on my face, before reaching up and picking a leaf out of his hair. "Hiie?" he squeaked hesitantly at my action.

"You had a leaf in your hair," I said to Tsuna's blushing face. He blushed a lot these days, strangely enough. He laughed and scratched the back of his head. I grinned; he was still shorter than me. A bit.

"Baka-Tsuna, Lambo-san is hungry!" Lambo whined, suddenly popping out from a bush.

Tsuna broke away, waving his hands a little and trying to stop Lambo from running away again. "Lambo, we'll go back home, okay? It's nearly lunch time, anyway…"

"Lambo-san knows the way himself. He doesn't need your help." Lambo did a cute kid sniff and turned his face away before walking away while picking his nose. Then he tripped, a purple thing poking out from his afro as he sat up muttering something that sounded close to "To-le-rate…"

"Lambo!" Tsuna sighed exasperatedly, before walking behind him. "You should be more careful!"

"Bwaaaah!" The kid, to my amused eyes, stood up and ran away, in the process jolting the Ten Year Bazooka from his hair. Tsuna made to run after him, before tripping on the root himself.

"Ouch…" He sat up, rubbing his head. "That hurt…"

"Are you okay, Tsuna?" I asked, going back to pick up my book then walking towards him. "You should be more careful."

"Hehe…" Tsuna chuckled awkwardly as he tried to stand up. His ears burned as his foot slipped on some pebbles and he fell on his back again. His eyes watered this time. "_Ow…"_

"Here, I'll help you. You're really like Dino…" I held out a bandaged hand, mentally wondering if they were up for it.

"Thanks. Again." I helped him up, oddly reminding me of that time when we were still in primary and I helped Tsuna up after the dodge ball match. Tsuna had become heavier though, and I had to brace myself a bit more.

Unfortunately, the pebbles under my feet weren't exactly that stable.

"HIIE!" Tsuna squeaked as we started falling forward (backward for him). I closed my eyes, bracing for impact before I realised that I had face-planted straight into dead leaves. Spluttering them out of my mouth, I looked around.

"Tsuna…?"

Wisps of pink smoke enveloped a silhouette that was much taller than the Tsuna I knew. When it cleared, it was with wide eyes we looked at each other. Grown up Tsuna still had that unruly hair, taller, and he looked pretty good in a normal t-shirt and jeans. Strangely, he was soaked through. Warm brown eyes looked down at my messed up hair from the fall, his hand twitching up before settling to staring at me again. His lips parted.

"Alice?" He asked softly, his voice nearly swallowed by the breeze rustling through the leaves overhead.

I gulped. Oh crap.

* * *

_Tsuna coughed in the smoke. Did he get hit in the ten-year bazooka or something? Though after sitting there for half a second, he shot up, shielding his face from the pouring rain. "Hiie!" He squeaked, before dashing towards a tree for shelter._

_He didn't see an umbrella anywhere, however hard he looked around. The tree wasn't providing much respite from the rain, and it was heavy he could hardly make out what was in front of him. _

_Peering under his arms, he tried to make out the scenery. It was basically a plain, and if he focused hard enough, he thought he could hear a roaring river. He shivered, jogging a little. Only five minutes…_

_Why was his future self here, anyway? No umbrella, and in this desolate landscape. He glanced around again, pushing his hair back and wishing he had a hood. There really was nothing, he thought. Just him getting soaked and the tree._

_No, wait… He looked to his left. What was that shadow? It was a stone of some kind… _

_Tsuna deliberated. He was pretty much soaked through anyway. And maybe finding out what it was would pass time quicker…_

_Stumbling forward, he quickly shuffled as quickly as he could towards the stone (which admittedly wasn't really that fast). Looking closer, it was a tombstone. Tsuna gave a little 'hiie', then a big one when thunder suddenly crashed. Immediately crouching down (even he knew not to attract lightning on a plain), his knee landed on something._

_They were flowers for the deceased. He mentally apologised to the deceased for smushing their flowers. Maybe he or she could realise it wasn't really his fault? ...Better not anger spirits. He bent his head a little, his wet hair flopping forward and gave a formal apology. But wait. Who was he apologising to?_

_Pushing his hair back, he tried to look through the rain, the water streaming down the stone, the streams of water dripping from his hair into his eyes. _

_Aw, shucks. It was in English. He traced it. A… the next was an I. No, an L. This one was an I. A-L-I-O? No, that was a P. No, that was a C…_

_What did that spell? He shouldn't have slept so much in English class. Just as he was joining the letters together with the last letter (that was an F, wasn't it?), he was suddenly in a multi-coloured tunnel again._

_Finally!_

* * *

We stared at each other for awhile. I was pretty much cursing myself then and there. Tsuna's first trip in the ten-year-bazooka was supposed to be his trip to save the future world! What had I done _now?_

"Tsuna." I settled for greeting him simply.

Ten years later Tsuna only stared at me, his hands fluttering sometimes before falling back to his sides. He had a frown on; it was obvious what he was thinking.

"I already know I'm dead in the future. But more importantly…" I stood up, and brushed the leaves off my hair and clothes. "Why are you soaking wet?"

"Oh." Older Tsuna jerked a little, snapping from his reverie. "It was raining, and I forgot my umbrella. Haha…" He laughed weakly at the end. "I was visiting somewhere important see, to prepare myself."

I narrowed my eyes, before widening them in understanding. Faking his death. Oh right.

"Where were you going? Little Tsuna can't go meet the older guardians yet, he can't…" I rambled, trying to escape from older Tsuna's stare while gripping my book in worry.

"Don't worry about that." Older Tsuna smiled for the first time, albeit a small one. "I even escaped Gokudera to go to that place alone. I needed it."

"Oh." I raised my eyebrows before glancing up to see Tsuna still staring with those expressive brown eyes; full of sadness, and joy, and regret and all sort of things I didn't understand. "Where were you going?"

"Your…" Tsuna grimaced, "grave."

"Oh." I said again. "Err, that's awkward." Tsuna's mouth only twitched a small small smile. It was so unlike the Tsuna I knew that I started frowning. "What's wrong?"

He jerked, and I stared at his face determinedly. Much taller, I noted absently. Tsuna blinked a few times at my question, and then suddenly he started laughing. Not a weak one, but one that was full and hearty. This time I was the one blinking. Sudden one-eighty?

"Even when you're only fourteen, and me twenty-five you can still know something's bothering me." He shook his head. "You were always like that. Always reading people."

"I don't." I said, scowling. "It's just that it's obvious for anyone who's looking."

"Then no-one must be looking then."

"I was. So what's wrong?"

Tsuna shook his head, face uncharacteristically grim even smiling. His face showed elements of his teenage face; it wasn't old. But it seemed more mature than his years.

What had changed him so?

"Can I ask you something?"

"Go."

"Can I hug you?" I stiffened, before staring at Tsuna incredulously. He laughed, running his hand through his hair in a defeated way. "I know you're not a very tactile person but…"

I sighed. How could I resist that _face?_

I walked forward and simply hugged him around the middle. He paused, before settling his arms gently around my shoulders. We stayed like this for awhile, though I wasn't particularly comfortable. This Tsuna needed this, I think.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you." Tsuna whispered.

And with that, he disappeared with a pink puff of smoke, and I was suddenly hugging another soaked figure.

"HIIE? Alice! W-w-why are you hugging me?"

"Oh, I was just standing there, and then you came back."

"O-oh…" Tsuna didn't question my answer which didn't make much sense.

"Come on." I walked away, and turned around. "We should go back to Nana's. It _is_ lunchtime, after all. I love your mom's cooking."

"O-okay!" He picked up the ten year bazooka and started walking towards me.

I sent him a grin, anticipating what Nana had cooked today. Tsuna took one look at my face and blushed (yet again). Shrugging, I kept walking and let Tsuna blab stuff to me.

Probably still embarrassed.

I mean, he liked _Kyoko._

* * *

"Sorry, Nana-san!" I said, carrying a huge box. Grey went a bit overboard, but it was okay right? "This is a cake! Your present! I'm going to leave early, so I wanted to give this to you earlier!" I exclaimed through puffs of air.

"Oh, Alice!" She hurried around and started helping me unload the cake onto the table. "Thank you!"

"No problem, Nana-san!" I said, and she gave me a reproachful look.

"Call me Nana, Alice!"

I smiled at her. "I'll try, Nana?"

"Mhmm! That's it!"

"I'll be going now, I'm sorry Nana, I hope you have a happy party!"

"Thank you, Alice!"

And I left, contributing even as I didn't join. I didn't know what I would do in a Vongola Style party anyway. Freak all the people out with my eyes?

* * *

"Alice!"

Tsuna came, panting and looking desperately at me.

"Did you see Reborn?"

"No." I shook my head slowly, and he looked even more worried. "Do you have an idea of where he would be?"

"No."

"Oh no, he's been missing since yesterday after he was hit by the ten-year bazooka…"

I widened my eyes.

Couldn't be…

* * *

**Well, guys, I hope you all review! I can't get enough of them, reading them makes me so happy. Gives me something to look forward to every single week! I was trying to get more Hibari and Alice interaction, but now it seems forced, but I'm not bothered to edit it since I'm tired. TT_TT**

**Any confusions, questions, plain encouragement, what you like, dislike, please tell! I hope I cleared up one of your questions from last week, about Alice being not as human as the rest.**

**See you all next week! Or next next week!**


	26. In a world of nine years and ten months

**This has some skipping – if you haven't gone up to future arc I'm sorry if something confuses you! _ Shortish chapter, and I had wanted to add a Ryohei extra but the ending was just too good and I couldn't stand not ending it there. XD I **_**had**_** wanted to make it longer, mind you! =3=**

**Hope you like this! It's an experiment, of sorts, to see if people like the recounting and the little added bits. There is some foreshadowing that's really obscure. Sorry, it's a bit emo, but then the whole future arc is a bit emo. Thanks for my sister for beta-ing, and you readers and reviewers too! All of you who reviewed last chapter receive cookie crumbs (oh, did I say crumbs? I'm sorry, I ate them all…)**

**No note at the end – so please enjoy and review!**

* * *

_"Alice!"_

_Tsuna came, panting and looking desperately at me._

_"Did you see Reborn?"_

_"No." I shook my head slowly, and he looked even more worried. "Do you have an idea of where he would be?"_

_"No."_

_"Oh no, he's been missing since yesterday after he was hit by the ten-year bazooka…"_

_I widened my eyes. _

_Couldn't be… _

_Tsuna bowed, and then ran off after making me promise to keep an out for Reborn. I just hurried home. I did not want to be drawn into the ten year future mess. If I just make my peace here, then a week later Tsuna and the others would just safely come back, nice and triumphant._

_No need for me to be there…_

* * *

Tsuna blinked, before widening his eyes at a familiar purple tunnel.

"Can't be… I got hit by the ten year bazooka again?"

He really wanted to sigh, but something felt wrong this time in the tunnel. A feeling in his chest told him this trip wouldn't be the same. But what… Tsuna screamed as the tunnel suddenly shot him out.

And he appeared on…

"Hiie?" Tsuna tentatively opened his eyes, only for them to meet darkness. There was a sweet smell clogging the space up.

"Tree? No, it's the smell of flowers… It's so dark," he said to himself, trying to calm himself a little bit. Reaching up, the ceiling was unexpectedly close.

"Oh, it moved!" The strange ceiling gave way as he pushed, letting a sliver of light in. Reaching up his other hand, he shoved it off and sat up, blinking in the sudden light. Looking around, it didn't seem like he was in Namimori. Deep dark forest on all sides… "Could this be ten-years in the future? It's so different from last time…"

"If I am ten years in the future, then my ten years later self would be here ten years later." Tsuna mused, taking comfort in his own voice in such total silence. There weren't even birds. "Then where am I?"

Well, he thought to himself, last time he wasn't dumped in a strange box that was shaped strangely like a coffin. Like a coffin?

"This is a… _coffin_?" Tsuna officially freaked out. "Why am I in a _coffin_?" he yelled.

"Who's there?" A deep voice yelled from the shadows of the forest and Tsuna immediately froze. Soft footsteps stepped closer and closer, until a silhouette was visible from Tsuna's perspective, the light behind him shadowing his face. But the hair was familiar, and Tsuna's mind slowly started working again. The shadow suddenly spoke, obviously shocked and much gentler than the last shout.

"Y-you're…"

This voice… Tsuna's mind started working properly again, and his own eyes widened. "You can't be… Go-Gokudera–"

But Tsuna was cut off by Gokudera collapsing on his knees and grabbing both of his shoulders.

"Juudaime," the figure in front of him said, so like and unlike the Gokudera he knew. He sounded like he was near tears, but his eyes were dry. Tsuna was more shocked than anything. It really was the future Gokudera, and it was amazing to note how much he'd grown.

But the Gokudera he knew never stuttered. And Tsuna's concern only deepened when the grey head in front of him started bowing repeatedly, his hands grabbing tighter and tighter and all the while repeating 'sorry'.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry–"

"Wait a minute – Ow!" Tsuna winced, and ten-years-later Gokudera immediately let go.

"Sorry." He apologised yet again.

"No, I mean, I don't really know what's going on," Tsuna said to him, immediately trusting all his troubles to his future right-hand-man. "I'm sure it's hard to believe, but I was hit by Lambo's ten-year- bazooka by accident…" he trailed off, seeing the Gokudera's face fall by his words.

"I see." He stated, still in that voice that sounded like he was close to crying. "Only five minutes…" His face twisted, eyes closed for a few moments, and when he opened his eyes again they shone a bit more than they should. "Listen closely, Juudaime."

"Eh?"

"When you go back to the past again, remember this moment and follow my instructions," he said seriously and calmly. Too calmly. "There is no time for details."

Ten-years-later Gokudera was so mature, Tsuna thought as he stared up at him. Eyes grim, sitting formally…

"When you go back, you must eliminate this person immediately!" Gokudera continued, taking out a picture from the inside of his jacket and holding it up for Tsuna to see.

"H-_huh?"_

"This is a picture from this time. You should know him from freshman year middle school."

"Eh, who is this…? And did you just say _eliminate?"_

"There's no need to hesitate." Gokudera said with his face partly shadowed. He knew well Tsuna's compassion.

"No, but, please wait a bit!" Tsuna tried to stall, noting that Gokudera was still a bit extreme even after ten years. He was glad that there was at least some resemblance, but _eliminate? _"By eliminate, do you mean kill?"

Gokudera's gaze immediately sharpened into one of focused hate. "If only he didn't exist, then Byakuran wouldn't be like this."

"Byaku…ran?" Tsuna repeated, then sat back a little. Now that he thought about it… Why had Gokudera's mood been so serious?

What was happening ten years in his future? His eyes strayed downwards towards the coffin.

"What I'm going to say next is only a precaution…" Gokudera said, oblivious to where Tsuna was looking at.

"Um, there's been one thing that's been bothering me," Tsuna said, looking earnestly at Gokudera. "Why is my future self in a coffin?"

Gokudera immediately stiffened even more as his eyes widened into a haunted look. Tsuna nearly tried to retract his words, but he pushed on.

"Why… is the future me in a coffin?" Tsuna asked again, fearing what Gokudera's reaction meant to him.

"That…" Gokudera said softly through gritted teeth, his eyes betraying his confusion and sadness, and turmoil over what to do. "That's because–" He was whispering, still hesitating when a plume of pink smoke enveloped him and Tsuna backed away from…

A younger Gokudera?

* * *

"To think paper letters are still being used ten years later in the future," Gokudera muttered as he went through the things that dropped out of ten-years-later Gokudera's suitcase. "And what is this… G-code!"

"G-code?" Tsuna questioned as he peered closer (he knew this was wrong, but it was just morbid curiosity).

"Oh, it was a code I created when I was still a first year in middle school," Gokudera said offhandedly to a shocked Tsuna who was wondering _just what he did in class_ and _how did he still get perfect hundreds then_?

"Guardians… come… together?" Gokudera read slowly, deciphering the letter slowly out loud for Tsuna.

"Huh?" Tsuna was about to say something more when someone stepped out of the trees. They both looked up to see a strange cloaked figure with blue hair.

"Just as I thought." The person said to herself. Then she looked up, and started picking something off her finger.

"Nice to meet you… and goodbye."

She raised an arm up armed with something metal.

"Enemy," Gokudera immediately said and darted in front of Tsuna. "Juudaime! Please stand back!"

* * *

"_Hahi! Alice-san!"_

_I turned around carefully to see Haru running towards me. Didn't she get hit by the ten year bazooka as well? Should I back away?_

"_Have you seen Reborn-kun, Alice-san?" She puffed out. _

"_No," I said flatly, still keeping an eye out for any suspicious red-heads that would throw something huge and purple my way. "Tsuna asked me that before too." I continued, trying to make the conversation seem remotely normal._

"_Ah! Tsuna-san!" Haru suddenly jumped up happily before drooping and facing the wall in a depressed fashion. "What shall I tell Tsuna-san when I tell him Haru couldn't find Reborn?"_

"_I think it'll be okay," I said placating her even while twitching at the sight of something orangey-red… and finding it was only a ribbon. "Tsuna's nice."_

_Haru immediately turned around and pouted at me. "Of course Tsuna-san's nice! And brave, and heroic, and a future mafia boss! Tsuna-san is the perfect guy!"_

"_Err," I said to her, "if you say so. Now, I have to go home…"_

"_Oh, Haru's sorry!" Haru said a quick goodbye and ran off to who knows where, and I continued my quick scurry back to the apartment. _

_Why was Grey out _today_ of all days?_

* * *

Tsuna peered out from behind the boulder they were hiding behind before quickly going back to join the other two.

"Um, who is the enemy?" He asked. Lal Mirch looked up before shushing him, sensing something coming. Tsuna and Gokudera eventually heard the heavy footsteps as well, slow and steady.

"This one is a recon. Do not move and let it pass." Lal ordered the two, keeping her eyes trained on the machine. The lights on her goggles flashed dimly, assessing the situation.

Gola Mosca continued to step forward, slowly going forward. Gokudera and Tsuna peered out from the boulder in spite of what Lal said to not move and gasped when they recognised the model.

"That's Varia's…" Gokudera said,

"Gola Mosca!" Tsuna finished with his eyes wide.

"Strau Mosca. Second Generation of the Gola Mosca units." Lal corrected behind them, still alert to any changes. "The military sold their secrets to others besides the Vongola." She continued quietly.

The steps stopped, and looked their way. "It's looking this way," Gokudera hissed at Lal.

"It's fine," she replied. "It searches for ring powers with built in sensors and attacks anything it finds." Then she lifted up her hand and the chained rings on them. "Our rings are sealed by the Mammon Chains."

She stopped when the Mosca suddenly started stepping towards them, slow in advance but increasing its speed as it went.

"Hey, it's coming this way." Gokudera stated the obvious even as Lal gritted her teeth in thought.

"Did it notice us?"

"It's impossible!" The older woman shot back softly, in hopes that it really didn't notice them. "Do you have any Rings other than the Vongola Rings?"

"No." Gokudera immediately said.

"Me neither." Then Tsuna paused. "No, the Ring Lancia-san gave me!"

"That Ring is… Why didn't you tell me!" she burst out.

Gokudera took out his bombs, and grinned. "Heh, you sound so cowardly. If all three of us take it on…"

"Even three of us couldn't take that thing on," she immediately said back. "We're going to be wiped out!"

He immediately tensed a bit more as he looked at her. Tsuna watched the exchange in worry. "Can't you do something with those Rings you're so proud of?" he growled at her.

"Having strength isn't all there is to fighting! Affinity is also important!" She looked up, charging the weapon on her arm with Mist flames. "And we were so close to the hideout! Damn it!" Jumping up on the boulder, she took aim. "I'll hold it back! Escape!"

"We can't do–" Tsuna said even as the Mosca held up an arm and started charging its own weapon. There was nothing they could do, and it was as if it was a nightmare come true _(even though it was pretty much like a nightmare already, with Vongola nearly decimated, them trapped in the future and the getting attacked)_ when a flash of metal came from behind the machine.

"Attaco di Squalo." The dark figure said, sword relaxed in his hand. "This should buy us a minute," the person said even as Tsuna's mouth dropped open at his voice. "Help has arrived."

"C-could you be…" Gokudera said, as the two ran forward.

"Y-Yamamoto?" Tsuna said in disbelief (because could they really be that lucky?), and Yamamoto only hefted his scabbard and grinned his usual grin.

"Huh? This isn't some kind of bad joke, is it?" Yamamoto asked, puzzled frown on his face. "I came to get the agent from the External Advisors, but you guys are here too." Then he tilted his head as he put a hand up to his chin. "But you've shrunk. An illusion? A ghost?"

Tsuna and Gokudera could only deadpan.

It really was Yamamoto, alright.

* * *

_The phone rang, and I picked it up to hear the receptionist's voice. "Brighteye-san, there is a request for you."_

"_Who is it?"_

"_Someone calling himself… Yamamoto Takeshi."_

"_Oh, put him on the phone." _

_There was a pause, before Yamamoto's cheerful voice came on the phone. "Alice! I feel so posh talking into a phone in such a grand atmosphere…"_

"_Why'd you come here, Yamamoto? It's me who usually goes to your house. No-one comes here."_

"_Haha, don't be like that, Alice! I just wanted to ask you something, you're usually pretty knowledgeable right?"_

_Trust Yamamoto to pick up on that._

"_What?"_

"_Haru just came to me asking where Tsuna and Gokudera went. They were searching for that kid at Tsuna's place together… Oh wait, there are a few kids at Tsuna's place. I mean, Haru and them were searching for the Reborn kid and when they were supposed to meet up they weren't there. Haru even checked at Tsuna's place and they weren't there."_

"_And so…"_

"_You know anything about it?"_

_I knew everything about it._

"_Don't worry. I think you'll know where they are soon. I think they're somewhere safe."_

"_You think? Oh, okay then! I'll go and practice some more baseball to loosen up. Thanks__,__ Alice!"_

"_Yeah."_

"_Bye!"_

_And the phone clicked off and I had a status report that Tsuna and Gokudera had already gone to the future. The future… _

_I looked at the creepy black journal from the future and shook my head. No way was I going to look in it again. Not until I was ready to face the consequences._

_But just in case Irie Shouichi comes up with something with his genius engineering mind, I'll write Grey a note saying if I disappeared for a few days not to worry._

_Just in case._

_Logically thinking though, how would he come up to the top of this twenty-seven storey building and hit me with something huge and purple when I was very physically able to dodge?_

_I mean, he was still a kid after all, in this time._

* * *

Yamamoto opened the door carefully, carrying Lal Mirch in his arms after she fainted passing through the barrier. Tsuna stepped in carefully, Gokudera a step behind him. Looking around, it was a usual Western décor…

"You're late." A squeaky voice came from the front.

Tsuna slowly turned around, his eyes growing watery at the familiar voice.

"Re-Reborn!" He stammered, taking a wobbly step forward with his vision a bit blurry from his tears and stretching a hand to try and touch him and see if he was real only to stop knowing he wouldn't want to be touched and oh he was just so happy that Reborn was back and…

"Hug me." Reborn said.

"Eh?" Tsuna said, still a bit dazed and retracted his hand knowing something was wrong when suddenly…

A tiny foot kicked him from behind, hitting the back of his head, making him fall forward and face-planting on the fake Reborn toy, which in turn nearly made him bite his tongue.

Reborn, in a white all-body suit with a tail, landed calmly on the floor with his usual smile and Leon on his head.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" Tsuna cried, holding his head and Gokudera immediately dropped the suitcase and knelt in front of him.

"Are you okay, Juudaime?" he exclaimed, not knowing how to make matters better.

The cause of all this just smirked. "My toes fit into the back of your head," Reborn said matter-of-factly.

Tsuna turned around pouring tears just like normal. "What's with this messed up reunion?" he asked even while knowing the answer. "I was looking all over for you!" Then he paused for a little bit and added a little more exasperatedly, "and you're in a weird outfit again!"

_But_, Tsuna thought to himself, _I'm glad he's safe._

Reborn just stood there, for once not hitting Tsuna for yelling at him.

"I can't help it," he replied to the accusation of wearing a weird outfit. "Unless I wear this special suit my body gets sick. I had the barrier made for me too."

"What do you mean?" Tsuna asked. Reborn jumped from the floor to the chair first, settling down before answering Tsuna's question.

"It just means it's a harsh world out there," Reborn said vaguely.

"There you go again, talking about these weird things."

Reborn just looked at him, taking a moment to remember when he came into this future. He had appeared at one of the six entrances of the Vongola hideout, quickly brought in and barrier activated, suit on. After he had recovered enough, he asked how Giannini how he had been so efficient.

He could've just changed _that_ much in ten years, but Reborn doubted it. And he was right. As always.

"_Oh, that, Reborn-san?"_

_Reborn just frowned at him. "What does 'that' mean, Giannini?"_

"_Of course the Vongola tried to get your remains when you died, but we were unsuccessful for the most part. That was, until two Brighteyes came with your ripped fedora."_

"_The Brighteyes did?" Reborn clarified, knowing the Brighteyes never really did anything for free unless on mission. There must be a catch. _

"_Yes, and they put it under a bush near Entrance number four, pointed to it to our cameras and went away. We later inspected it of course, and found a note underneath your hat. It said to leave the fedora there, to keep an eye on it all the time, and this was just a favour __for__ our previous Brighteye ally."_

_They only had one Brighteye ally. Alice. What did they mean from previous? Did she leave or something? Reborn sorted all these probabilities in his mind, before asking a question once again._

"_So the Brighteyes are on our side?"_

_Giannini shook his head, before breathing out a hefty sigh. "No, Reborn-san. They stopped being an important ally nearly six years ago."_

"_Why?"_

"_Oh, I forgot Reborn-san didn't know!"_

_Reborn had to stop the itch of shooting the inventor to death, and instead just hefted Leon instead. Giannini's eyes widened and immediately started talking._

"_Alice-san, who was our link to the resources of the Brighteyes and their network died about six years ago. Since then, the Family has continued on without their support under the guidance of our wonderful Vongola Juudaime!"_

_Reborn sat back, stroking Leon with a frown on his face. Alice had known about this situation in the future even six years ago? But there was no use in puzzling over her actions in letting this happen because… she was dead?_

_Brighteyes were near indestructible. How did she die?_

_Reborn vowed to make this a secret from Tsuna and the others, when he went back into the past, and observe Alice more. He couldn't let such an important ally go and die. But keeping this a secret was the more important one._

_Tsuna was too soft-hearted. __Reborn__ knew __that __even the concept of one of his close friends dying would shock him into inaction, or even __into __the will to not become Vongola Boss._

_He could never let that happen._

Tsuna talking about something drew him back to the present.

"Oh yeah! Something's wrong! We can't go back to the past!"

Reborn was seriously tempted to whack his student. Wouldn't that be obvious to him if he himself was still here?

"I know that much," Reborn said to him. "That's not the only odd thing."

"There's something else?" Tsuna said, half in disbelief, the other just resigned.

"The time is off. We were shot by the ten-year-bazooka, but only nine years and ten months have passed.

Tsuna did some mental maths. "That means… it was off by two months."

"Yeah. Even I have no idea why that happened," Reborn said seriously.

"That's terrible! Even Reborn doesn't know?"

"Well, at least we weren't blown into a strange land, though."

"Land?" Tsuna asked, before asking another question he had wanted to ask for a long time, but hadn't gotten the chance (and just plain forgotten, in some cases). "Oh, right! Where are we, anyway?"

"Hm? You don't even know that?" Reborn said even without a smirk. Just how ignorant were they? They were just lucky that Lal met them first to protect them, or they would have died outside. Just lucky.

They couldn't rely on Luck next time.

He tuned out Tsuna's outburst and turned to Yamamoto. It was still strange to see the Yamamoto he knew so grim. But it was to be expected, he guessed. "Yamamoto, can you put it on the monitor?"

"Yeah. This is above us." Yamamoto pulled out a remote and switched on the television to show a dark landscape of a city at night.

* * *

_Grey came back, and I made him read the note and told him some additional information like, yes, it was related to mission, and no, I didn't really need a lunchbox prepared. _

_And if my plan worked out well, then maybe I didn't need to go to the future at _all_. Miss some battle experience, but…_

_Wait, Ryohei didn't go to the future in the first part either, until he got pulled in later on. So would I get pulled in as well? _

_I groaned and banged my head against the wall. _

_Maybe I could escape to Antarctica or something, a place where they could never reach me and I could happily freeze my toes off and play with penguins without worry that a purple thing would come and eat me up towards the future._

_And hey, the bright side of that idea was that my toes couldn't freeze off._

_But hey, reality had to catch up with me some time._

_I sighed and just banged my head against the wall, only to find a pillow attached there by Grey._

_So I just sighed and moped back towards my room._

* * *

Tsuna twisted under his blankets, squeezing his eyes closed as hard as he could, remembering the discussion that had ensued in that Western room. How could they return back to the peaceful Namimori? It seemed like no-one knew.

He didn't want to face it.

He really didn't.

* * *

"The enemy, the Millefiore family has a huge military force, and they're cold and cruel." Reborn said to him, still in his chair.

Yamamoto looked up, looking just defeated. His smile was gone. "When the Vongola Headquarters fell, Millefiore prepared a talk between the two leaders and called on our Boss."

Tsuna jerked a bit, knowing that by 'Boss' they meant him. "And then?" He murmured, half-dreading the answer.

"However, they didn't negotiate at all, and took the Boss's life." Yamamoto finished the sentence with an angry look on his face, hopeless and desperate all at the same time. But as he paused, he composed himself, and so he continued. "Since then, the Millefiore have ignored all our summons and have continued to kill people on our side. Their goal is to wipe out every last person on the Vongola side."

"M-meaning that, even though we've come from the past we're still in danger?" Tsuna exclaimed, a bit overwhelmed at the events. Gokudera kept his silence, frown on his face as he contemplated what all this just _meant._

"That's not all." Reborn piped up, "Every person you've been involved with is a target as well."

That immediately incited an immediate reaction. "That's!" Tsuna protested, already starting to panic.

"Don't lose your head," Reborn commanded. "All hope isn't lost. Yamamoto," he said, and Yamamoto looked at him, "even though they're separated, the Family's Guardians haven't been confirmed as dead by the hands of the Millefiore, right?"

Yamamoto widened his eyes, before narrowing them and silently asking what Reborn was going at when it was obvious that one of them had been dead for ages. But knowing Reborn had reasons…

"Yeah."

"Then there's only one thing to do. You need to gather the six Guardians who have separated."

"Gather the six Guardians?" Tsuna asked.

"I'm certain that there is a connection between our presence here and the fighting in this era," Reborn continued, ignoring Tsuna's question. "To fight back against them, we have no choice but to gather the Guardians."

"But why only six Guardians? And what could we do, with only six Guardians and me? There are only seven people!" Tsuna protested, looking at Reborn for an explanation.

"Don't say such a shameful thing." Reborn replied, still ignoring Tsuna's question. "In the long history of the Vongola, there have been many crises. But each time, the bosses of old have overcome the difficulties, with the _six_ Guardians that defend the Sky."

Tsuna gritted his teeth.

"Got it? Now, we're going to decide the order in which to gather the Guardians. Then first…"

"Wait a bit! Why are you always saying _six _Guardians? And you said that people we knew are targets for the Vongola-hunt as well." Tsuna's voice broke a bit in fear of the answer to his question. "Does that include Mom and Kyoko-chan?"

Reborn only stared at him, knowing it wasn't good to tell him. He had been planning to keep this a secret too, hoping that shoving so much information in his face would make him go into enough shock to let him prepare an answer for this inevitable question.

"Reborn!" Tsuna insisted.

And, Yamamoto noticing that Reborn wasn't planning on answering took to explain, trying to stop the grief from overflowing from thoughts of his old man. Tsuna was his Boss, after all, young or old. "The range of people the Millefiore goes after keeps growing."

Tsuna turned around to face him, and Yamamoto ignored Reborn's look and continued.

"I'm afraid they're targets as well."

It took a few seconds to register the fact, before he whirled around to face Reborn again, hoping that he would bring some miracle to the situation, some respite, the sliver of light in a dark room. "That's horrible! What do we do, Reborn?"

"We've already made our move." Reborn said, voice calm, and gave a tiny nod to Yamamoto.

"When I went to get Lal Mirch, I-pin and Lambo went looking for Sasagawa and Haru."

"They did? Oh right, on this side they're not kids!" Tsuna smiled, happy one side had been partially solved.

Before Reborn popped the bubble. "But, about Mama… The timing was bad. She went on vacation to Italy with Iemitsu, and we're unable to determine their status."

"Italy? So that means…" Tsuna said, feeling his knees shake a little.

Gokudera said his first sentence since his outburst on Yamamoto about Tsuna's death. "Juudaime, she said that the Vongola Headquarters had been annihilated."

"They couldn't have… Mom…" Tsuna stammered, his pupils contracting as the shock settled in. Reborn frowned.

"Our other allies, Bianchi and Fuuta are out gathering information."

Gokudera burst into life then, turning around to look at Yamamoto. "Are they safe?", he asked partly for his half-sister.

"However, most of the people we know in Namimori have been killed in the last two days." Yamamoto said flatly, arms crossed tight in front of his chest.

"Including Yamamoto's old man," Reborn added, looking up at Tsuna to see his reaction. Both of them, Gokudera and Tsuna looked at Yamamoto who didn't even try to flash a smile to indicate he was fine. Frowning, he averted his eyes, wanting to deal with his own grief in his own way.

They shouldn't need to worry about him.

"Oh no…" Tsuna said, shock etched in his face as he tried to find words to say to Yamamoto. He found none. He had been worrying about his family, Kyoko-chan and the rest that he didn't regard Yamamoto who already had his only family killed…

He remembered his dad, smiling as he put the counter down and made sushi for him when he was in hospital. When Yamamoto grinned at his dad in a way that you just _knew_ they were close.

How…

Looking at Yamamoto now, it all seemed just so real. Suddenly, they realised that finding Reborn was the least of their worries, a whole world hostile to them was just outside the base trying to find them and, oh, he felt so bad for still worrying about this but his mom, and Kyoko-chan, Haru and… _Alice_.

"You shouldn't worry about me, Tsuna." Yamamoto told him, his face grim and not yet ready for a smile.

"But," Tsuna protested. Yamamoto firmly shook his head, and Tsuna knew that pushing it would just be one more worry to him. So he nodded, before turning to Reborn.

"There's something strange, Reborn."

Reborn didn't give a hint to his sudden alertness. No twitch, no sudden stiffness. He was the world's greatest Hitman, and yes he had fallen far, but not so much to give away his emotions when he didn't want them to.

"What, Tsuna? You should be going to sleep now." He wheeled around and started towards the door.

"No, wait, Reborn!" He heard his stupid student's footsteps follow him.

"Yes?"

"Why do you keep saying that there are _six_ Guardians when there are seven? No matter how I count, I get eight Guardians when I include myself!"

He noticed Yamamoto had closed his eyes, and he had the feeling that he had when he was asking Gokudera why he was in the coffin. That dread in the pit of his stomach that he knew the answer was _not going to be good_ but he had to know, he just had to…

"And, and when you said Bianchi and Fuuta were out collecting information, why would they need to when, um, you said something about Alice being from the best information network in the world?" Tsuna knew he was onto something, something Reborn wanted to hide. Reborn always had his reasons. But this time. "Please, Reborn! What's _happened?"_

Reborn had his eyes shadowed, and he had stopped walking long ago. A fast glance at Yamamoto let him know that he wasn't intending to tell this one.

This one was up to him.

"Do you really want to know, Tsuna?" Reborn asked, turning around fully. Tsuna gulped, before nodding, and the feeling of dread in his stomach intensified into something that made him want to sit down before he fell over. Gokudera was behind him, silent as well. The room was so silent, much quieter than the forest, or any awkward silence he had experienced.

Then Reborn opened his mouth.

"Alice… is dead."

That was more than Tsuna had expected. He staggered backwards, and nearly fell over, feeling dizzy. What?

What did he just hear?

"What do you mean, Reborn-san!" Gokudera burst out, and Tsuna gladly focused on his voice. "You said none of the Guardians were confirmed dead!"

"I said none of the Guardians have been confirmed dead by the Millefiore."

Silence after that sentence. Then a tiny voice nearly swallowed up by silence.

"D-does that mean Alice wasn't killed like Yamamoto's dad?"

Reborn nodded. "She died six years ago." Both Gokudera and Tsuna jerked. So long ago? "It was by a disease that had no cure, and she died in peace. She was buried on a plain in a field, originally in a coffin but dug out and cremated just in case she was hit by the ten-year-bazooka."

Yamamoto's nod confirmed it, and Tsuna closed his eyes in an attempt to block everything out.

Dead?

How could Alice be dead? He remembered how she was just _always there._ Never really contributing, sitting at the back or on the side just being there.

The world seemed so much scarier without her watching over them all.

* * *

_Oh God, oh Buddha, please, _Tsuna prayed, _let Mom… Kyoko-chan… Haru be safe. Please…_

He broke out into little sobs, trying to muffle them while knowing one of the people he should have been praying for was now dead. Clutching the little charm Kyoko had made with the bad stitches Alice had sewn on, he could feel the thick threads that made the little charm.

He threw the blanket over his head in an effort to soften the sound of his crying. _Please let them all be safe._

_Please, please…_

But in spite of all his efforts to soften his crying, Gokudera lay awake, listening.


	27. You just don't want to land near a enemy

**Yahaha! One day late! ^^'**

**Thank you to all reviewers! I just love how I read them and suddenly I get the will to be like I HAVE TO WRITE MY NEXT CHAPTER!**

**But exams are coming soon. It's so unfair how on the first day back from holidays are my yearlies (major MAJOR exams). So study study study (don't really want to).**

**Thanks to my sister for beta-ing! Please enjoy, I really promise (**_**promise)**_** that the future arc will not be this slow. Because truthfully, this chapter and last chapter should've been one chapter. :D So expect next chapter to get lots of plot done. **

* * *

_There are, of course, days that seem like you can relax and play and it's all sunny and wonderful. Today was one of those type of days; kind of warmish, slightly breezy and relaxing. _

_Not for me. Nor, apparently, __for __Yamamoto and the others. He placed another call in, asking me if I wanted to join them in a meeting at Tsuna's house with Kyoko and Haru (who __had__ invited him in the first place, since he was a close friend to Reborn, Tsuna and Gokudera, the victims of what they coined the 'disappearance'). _

_For a while now, I had been wondering how Shouichi was able to hit Lambo, I-pin, Yamamoto, Haru and Kyoko all within a single short time frame. This answered my questions._

_As if I would go when I realised _that_._

"_Um, tell me all about it later okay, Yamamoto?" I said instead into the receiver. _

_He laughed, and said bye (promising to call after they had brainstormed). So I put down the receiver and sighed, thinking of a happy day consisting of boring Japanese TV and air-conditioning._

_Can't live without the air-conditioning._

* * *

"A lot of us still depend on the Rings though," Yamamoto explained as they walked between the broken warehouses. That was, until an explosion came from the front. They all immediately stiffened, until they recognised their backs. Yamamoto slid his sword off his shoulder, and there was a shout.

"This way!" I-pin shouted to two people still hidden by the dust, looking a bit worse for wear even from the back. Lambo was also hurt, but still ready to help.

Tsuna's eyes widened in recognition. "Lambo! I-pin!" He shouted.

"Quick, this way!" I-pin said yet again to the two figures still enshrouded in dust.

"They're with someone," Yamamoto said seriously.

"C-could it be… Are the people there…" Tsuna stuttered, trying to look through the dust himself. His intuition was tingling, saying he was correct. It was proven just a second later.

I-pin looked up, and then looked back at the two still hidden figures. "Kyoko-san, Haru-san, run. We'll handle this," she said as calmly as she could.

"It is," Tsuna said to himself, momentarily glad.

And then another explosion that flung all four of them apart. Gokudera immediately followed where the red missile came from, and pointed it out to Tsuna. "They're above us!"

Red flames kept them alight in the air; a huge scythe wearing flames as well entered their view as soon as they looked up. Two people in identical uniforms were standing there in the sky, smirking arrogantly down at them.

"Go finish them off." Tazaru confidently said to the person beside him.

"Leave it to me, Bro," Nosaru replied cockily.

* * *

_Grey came in with a phone receiver._

"_Another call for you, Miss."_

_I groaned. "_Another _call? That's three calls more than normal!"_

_Grey raised his eyebrows. "You've only had three calls, Miss."_

"_Yeah yeah," I said as I levered myself out of the dent I had made in the comfy couch – that was how long I had been laying there. "Tell whoever it is I'm coming." I padded over and took the phone off Grey. "Yes?"_

_Nana's voice filled my left ear. "Oh, Alice-chan!"_

_I was surprised. "Nana?"_

_She squealed, for a reason I didn't know (maybe because I finally dropped the suffix), then went straight towards the point. "Have you seen Tsu-kun's friends? They were having a meeting waiting for Tsu-kun and Reborn-kun but they suddenly disappeared when I was getting tea."_

_So they finally went to the future. My hunch was right after all. Thank goodness I didn't go._

"_Ah, I think they got a clue or some sort of where Tsuna and Reborn went. You know us children; we go running around everywhere when we want to."_

_Nana laughed, before getting a bit serious again. "Though I do want to where Tsu-kun and Reborn-kun went…"_

"_Oh, they went on a picnic that Reborn planned. Don't worry__;__ they'll be back in a few days." I reassured her. I had always felt sorry for Nana, being the one that always waited for people in her family to come back to her._

"_Hearing that from you makes me relieved, Alice-chan!" __s__he said brightly, and I grinned in response (even though I knew it was kind of pointless when you smile to someone over a _phone_) and we said some useless stuff before saying goodbye. Giving the phone back to Grey (I was becoming such a lazy bum); I went back to the couch__,__ determined to make a new dent._

* * *

"Kyoko-chan!" Tsuna cried (literally) as he panted at the next doorway and peered in… to see Kyoko with… with… _long hair? _Tsuna froze. "Kyoko…chan…"

And then embarrassment finally caught up with Tsuna and he whipped around to wipe the tears and snot off his face. She had seen him crying! So lame! Blushing hard, he kept rubbing his eyes but he was so glad that Kyoko-chan was safe,

"Tsu-kun." Kyoko said with her voice as sweet as he remembered. He stopped rubbing his eyes immediately (still blushing) and looked at her. "Thank you, you came for us, _Tsu-kun_."

Tsuna averted his eyes now knowing his face looked like a tomato because _why the heck was she calling him Tsu-kun?_

"Sorry," Kyoko continued to say to Tsuna's back (he was acting a bit weird today), "I sprained my ankle."

And at this, Tsuna immediately forgot his embarrassment and ran to Kyoko. "Eh? Are you all right?" He knelt, his hands hovering her ankle even as he tried to think of what to do in these type of cases. What did they say in those first-aid crash courses?

Kyoko stared at Tsuna. He never really openly showed his concern for her anymore, not really. Not such innocent open concern. Not after _her_ death.

She leaned forward, trying to inspect him better. "What could it be?" she said to herself, and Tsuna looked up at her face (too close for comfort), and she smiled at him. "You seem kind of younger, and sweeter," she concluded, and Tsuna drew himself up with a highly nervous expression.

"Um, well…"

"I'm not missing out on anyone. Don't worry, it'll be over soon. I can't keep the main dish, the Guardian of the Rain, waiting." A deep voice behind them said, and they both wheeled around to see that man, Tazaru, floating in the air with his scythe at the ready.

Tsuna was prepping himself, his arms were shaking, and his vision was only filled with his enemy. Preparing his Dying Will pills and his gloves, he tried to ready himself.

Tried.

Because right then, a plume of pink smoke came from behind him and he looked back in alarm to see… a younger Kyoko.

"Tsuna-kun!"

* * *

_**~Yesterday~**_

_Irie Shouichi stared hopelessly in front of the most opulent (and expensive) hotel in Namimori. Even the gates looked huge. He looked at the note that his future self gave him._

_Was it really here…?_

_Plodding up to the entrance, he went straight up the stairs (oh no, he felt a stomach ache coming from all those stares) and tried not to let his knees buckle as he tried to peer over the counter and see the receptionist._

"_U-um, c-can I please s-see A-Alice Brighteye?"_

_The whole foyer immediately snapped to attention and he gulped. _

"_Brighteye-sama lives on the penthouse floor, and is our most important guest. Can you please prove that you are a close acquaintance, if not please leave immediately." The receptionist said snobbishly and he gulped yet again._

_So he left, feet dragging and stared at the top floor of the hotel._

_At the top of twenty-seven floors, lugging a big purple artillery bazooka that will definitely not pass security with weedy non-buff arms…_

_Irie Shouichi wanted to cry._

_And… oh crap. He collapsed against a wall next to his bag containing the bazooka. _

_He had a stomach ache._

_**~Present~**_

_Shouichi fiddled with something in the box. He had observed the hotel earlier, and had found out that even though security was tight physical wise, the post was mostly untouched. Maybe it was related to the rich people inside being paranoid._

_Whatever, he knew that the post was untouched. So he got to work immediately. _

_He didn't spend so much time fiddling with gears in his room for nothing._

_Sighing, he wiped sweat from his forehead even as he looked proudly at what he done. A box that looked absolutely normal from the outside. Hefting it, it was a bit heavier than he would have wished, but if it worked out well…_

_He could only hope it worked out well._

_Drinking some water to quell his stomach just in case, he watched the men unload boxes from the post office truck to the hotel cart. _

_And just to his luck, the person wheeling the cart suddenly left it._

_He quickly darted over, put the box on the cart, checking the address was clear and correct and left, stripping off his gloves._

_Finally done. _

_Hope it would work._

* * *

"Funny you bring that up, actually," Reborn replied to Gokudera saying Lal Mirch not being a good trainer. "Lal Mirch was a trainer for the Italian forces COMSUBIN. Even I would acknowledge her as a trainer."

Reborn watched with a smile on his face as Lal Mirch stopped walking away, and settled himself more comfortably on Yamamoto's shoulder. "Well, that's also because she was the one who trained Colonello before he became Arcobaleno."

"Colonello?" Tsuna echoed blankly.

"Trained?" Gokudera followed up just as blankly before…

"EHH?" They both yelled as they had the same realisation at the same time. Yamamoto watched in confusion (wasn't the Colonello guy the baby with the hawk that came to watch the Ring Battles?) as both Tsuna and Gokudera started exclaiming things like

"That Colonello's trainer?" Tsuna squeaked.

"She trained _Arcobaleno?" _Gokudera exclaimed even more incredulously.

"But can you become a student so young?" Tsuna said as he tried to imagine a baby being trained.

"And before Colonello was an Arcobaleno he wasn't even born yet?" Gokudera muttered.

Now Yamamoto really was confused. Reborn on his shoulder just smirked, enjoying their confusion. Then he proceeded to blank out for a bit, as his student yet again tried to placate the stupid cow (he really wanted to shoot him) and then a scream?

Reborn turned his head around and just held on tighter as his stupid student and his friends all started running towards the kitchen.

When they arrived, they were both staring at something under the sink.

"There's something under the sink!" Haru pointed at the black bulge of _something_ as it shifted a bit and made some weird grunting noises.

"Eh?" Tsuna said as he also tried to figure out what it was.

"Just what is this?" Gokudera asked as he knelt and was just about to touch the black… _thing_ when it suddenly shifted backward and then suddenly, instead of a bulge there was a huge fat person sitting on him.

He was freaking heavy, dammit.

"Whew, I finally got out!" The huge person said.

"And you are…?"

The person proudly turned around, still sitting (and partially suffocating) Gokudera. Gokudera's face started going red (was he really just about to touch this person's butt?)

"I am the Vongola Family supplier, the weapons tuner and inventor. My name is Giannini!"

* * *

_Going __through the sack of Reborn books Bill gave me, I read through all of them regarding the future. And then watched the animation for the extra arcs and for a sense of motion._

_Seeing them all anime-like on the screen and the books made me want to laugh and twitch from nostalgia at the same time. Tsuna's gravity defying hair was there for sure, __but __Hibari's eyes weren't _that_ slitted. Gokudera's temper was of course there, but they couldn't capture the 'if you come near me or the Tenth you die' type of aura._

_Yamamoto was the baseball fanatic, but in real life his hair was just a tiny bit longer. And talking about hair, Lambo's afro wasn't so big to cover his _chin_ but… well, it was still a huge afro. Funny thing was, Kyoko's eyes weren't that huge but still pretty big, and all the hair colours were correct._

_Which meant the orange hair was related to the whitish-grey, somehow green hair was possible, and whacky hair colours like pink was actually real. Making me wonder which was Dominant and Recessive. I mean, green and pink and…_

_Suppressing the inner scientist (I had always loved science more than most…) I turned my attention back to the frozen screen with Byakuran's face on it. _

_Funny really, he didn't actually want to ruin the worlds. He only wanted to make stuff more interesting._

_I guess I did understand in a way. I mean, if I wasn't with Tsuna all the time and laughing from the sidelines then I would be bored as hell too._

_Hm… I switched off the television and reached for the ancient history textbook that we needed to read._

_We had been doing kind of modern-ish history, and the only parts of ancient history covered were the Japanese. This led me to thinking about other history, and right then we started doing world ancient history._

_Interesting thing was, it was around five-hundred years ago that things started to deviate from what I remembered from my… err, first life. I mean, history wasn't my strongest subject, but history was mostly accurate until five-hundred years ago._

_The thing that changed this world from what was my world was, I guess (nothing sure, disappointingly, as Brighteyes did only come at Vongola age and that was four-hundred years ago according to the author of Katekyo) was a huge war between the Asian states and the Western ones._

_This helped Japan and the other Asian states have a stronger standing in world affairs (as the Asian side won, surprisingly), while also letting an influx in crime in western countries like, for example, Italy. Mafia is surprisingly huge in this world, so Tsuna being Vongola actually meant something here._

_Seriously, fights were so common, and there were so many corrupted police it wasn't funny. I mean, our network also had a huge number of corrupted police so…_

_I sighed and flopped onto the couch._

_Just a week, I consoled myself. Then they would come back._

_Just then, there was a 'ding!' and I looked over to the postal box/carrier/elevator thing._

"_Post, Brighteye-san."_

_I nodded, and when the postal man left I peered curiously at the box. What was it? Grey was yet again buying groceries (apparently he liked choosing produce himself) so it wasn't really checked._

_But then, I thought to myself even as I padded over, they wouldn't allow anything dangerous in here right?_

_Crouching, I prepared to open the box…_

* * *

"Stop acting cool, Tsuna. You're a guy that can't be a hero. To bring everyone back to the past, or to bear with training to beat an enemy. Acting cool like that isn't like you," Reborn said to Tsuna matter-of-factly. "The feeling you had at that time was much simpler wasn't it?"

"At that time…" Tsuna said slowly, trying to understand what Reborn was trying to imply.

"The first time you lit the flame on your Ring," stated Reborn, "what was it you wanted to do?"

Tsuna stared at Reborn, before having a little realisation of his own. "I just wanted… To protect Kyoko-chan!"

Reborn smiled at Tsuna this time. He knew it; his student wasn't really a saviour. Always being a little self-centred was his thing. "Good answer. Isn't there someone you want to protect now?"

Blinking, Tsuna had another realisation. "Of course," he said, closing his eyes, imagining Kyoko, Haru, Lambo, I-pin… and his whole Family. "I want to protect everyone."

And just like that, an orange flame ignited on his Ring. Tsuna stared at it in surprise, before smiling a little.

"You did it, Tsuna!"

"Juudaime!" Gokudera exclaimed, and Tsuna smiled up at both of them from the floor before turning back to Reborn on his knee.

"It came out, Reborn!" He said happily, and Reborn smiled back (not intending to hit him this time, just this once).

"No duh." Then Reborn paused, before pinching his student's arm back in a hold he knew would hurt (nah, seeing him in pain was just too fun to miss). "Don't make me worry, No-good-Tsuna."

"Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch!" Tsuna flailed his other arm even as Gokudera once again tried to help (but not doing much because really, who in their right mind would oppose Reborn?) and Yamamoto just laughed, scratching the back of his head (hey, Tsuna lighting that flame was a good thing right?). Lal Mirch watched this normal Vongola family scene for a moment, before holding out the box that they had to open to pass her test.

"Now I want you to open this box."

Gokudera immediately turned around and tried to impress his most important Juudaime. "Leave it to me, I'll open it and end all this immediately," he said with his usual confident tone.

Lal Mirch didn't react to what he said and just threw to him. "Try it."

Catching it with a grin, Gokudera lit his Ring and shoved the red flame into the hole in the box. "Alright, watch this." He said, making sure Tsuna was watching. "Come out!"

Nothing happened.

…

"Th-this," Gokudera muttered.

"Gokudera-kun?" Tsuna said, eyes looking at him in confusion.

"It's broken," Gokudera continued, annoyed. "I know from experience." Yamamoto laughed.

"Let me try it. Like this?" Yamamoto said, grabbing it from Gokudera. He was interested about how it all worked too. Lighting his Ring and slotting his blue flame in the box, it once again didn't open. His smile dropped. "Nothing's happening."

"Oi!" Gokudera snarked at Lal. "Isn't this thing broken?"

"It's not broken." Lal Mirch stated. "If a box can't be opened, there are two possibilities. Either the flame is weak, or the attribute is different."

"Attribute?" Tsuna questioned.

"There are seven different types of flames emitted from Rings. They are divided the same as the Vongola Rings. Sky, Storm, Sun, Cloud, Mist, Lightning and Rain. The boxes are also divided into seven attributes," Lal Mirch explained quickly before a frowning Tsuna once again cut in.

"Why is it seven again?" He questioned. "Why does everyone cut out the Star?"

Lal Mirch closed her eyes for patience before snapping them open again.

"The Star Guardian is a special place that only a few Vongola bosses have had the luck to possess. There have been only three Star Guardians in the whole history of Vongola."

Gokudera blinked. "But there are ten Vongola bosses!"

Tsuna stared at Gokudera with a dead-pan look. He wasn't a Vongola boss yet…

Lal nodded. "Only Primo, Ottavo and Decimo ever successfully acquired a Star Guardian."

"O-only three?" Tsuna stuttered with wide eyes. Reborn hopped onto Yamamoto's shoulder.

"And they said Ottavo only acquired her Star Guardian because the Brighteye was a womaniser," Reborn said with a smirk, playing with Leon. Tsuna deadpanned at Reborn. Because, r_eally?_

Yamamoto blinked. "Huh? Brighteye?"

Oh, Yamamoto didn't know…

"Yes, Alice is from the best information gathering family in the world, their main agents trained from the age of eight to their Family's traditions. The elite of the family have no previous records, no birth certificates, nothing and are given numbers one to fifty. Apparently the numbers have nothing to do with ability, only age." Reborn said for everyone's benefit. "This was what our information sources could find."

"_Eight?"_ Tsuna said, shocked. When he was that age, he was still struggling with learning writing katakana! Then Alice…?

Yamamoto was shocked as well, not thinking that his friend could be… He really should stop being shocked, with Tsuna's Mafia already so surprising every day already. But she had no childhood?

Then he cracked a grin.

Was that why she was so socially inept?

Reborn continued with a gleam in his eye. "Alice was one of the numbered ones. And she was number fifty, youngest in the elite faction of the Brighteyes. And the fact that she joined as our Star Guardian…"

Alice had been so special?

"B-but why Brighteyes?" Tsuna asked, still trying to absorb the information. Lal took over from there, stepping forward and eyeing the three of them in impatience.

"Only Brighteyes could ever fill the Star Guardian position. It was found to be fact when every single Star Guardian chosen from outside the Brighteye family who ever wore the Star Ring died at exactly two weeks after chosen. When Ottavo's Star Guardian was a Brighteye and didn't die it only proved the point. But Brighteyes hate joining other families, therefore there have only been three Star Guardians in history."

Tsuna tugged at his hair, trying to remember all this at once. "Th-then what about the Flames? Why isn't Star included?"

Lal Mirch only sighed. "Even in Flames, there are different types of rarity. If talking about the general Flames, then the Sky Flame would be the rarest to find. Actually, Sky flames are very rare."

Tsuna jerked and pointed at himself. "Me?"

"As expected of Juudaime!" Gokudera said happily.

She ignored them and continued. "But Star Flames are strange in the way that other Flames aren't."

"Huh?" Gokudera asked from the sidelines, sorting the information through his mind and filing it in the correct places. This wasn't expected.

"What is special about the Star Flames is that they are limited to only one Family."

Reborn was especially interested, as he also didn't know this yet. "The Brighteye Family." He said his conclusion to Lal, and she nodded.

"Yes, the Brighteye Family. We don't know what makes them so special, but the other strange thing about this Flame is that only the elite fifty have that Flame. And it isn't always that all fifty spots are filled. Even the smaller members of the Family don't have the Star Flame. So in aspects to rarity…"

"The Star Flame is the rarest of all Flames."

"Yes." Lal nodded. "So therefore there are very few boxes that correspond with the Star Flame."

"Oh, so one type of Flame can open one box?"

"The boxes won't open unless the attribute and the box match." Lal confirmed, glad they were back on topic again.

Yamamoto looked at his Ring and the mysterious box. "So it's kind of like a key."

"Oi, wait a second. Ten-years-later Yamamoto didn't say anything about this." Lal looked at Gokudera. "He something about a wave."

"A wave is what is required to make a Flame." Lal answered, continuing with her teaching.

Reborn only sat in silence through this.

He had much to research on the Brighteyes. He had to make sure that Alice wouldn't withhold information again, even if he knew there was a reason.

But the strange thing was, recently it had been harder and harder for him to read her mind…

* * *

_Wait a minute__.__ I stared at the box. There was something strange. Yeah, something was definitely strange with this box._

_If this came from the postal service, why weren't there any stamps? There had to be a stamp _somewhere_. If this box was something suspicious, then the person making it would be an idiot for forgetting to put at least one stamp on!_

_A red head somewhere sneezed._

_I put my hand under my chin and stared at it._

_My curiosity was killing me… I had to know at least!_

_But what did they say? Curiosity killed the cat? (But hey, wasn't the second part of the phrase 'and satisfaction brought it back? Can't say anything about something reviving from the dead from my point of view). _

_Should I?_

_Shouldn't I?_

_Should I?_

_What if this was a plot from Irie Shouichi to get me into the future?_

…_couldn't be._

_I reached out a hand to open it again. _

* * *

Yamamoto felt like laughing a bit to himself.

"_Takeshi, when you feel something is scary, or sad, or awkward or tense just laugh!" His dad said even as he laughed himself. "Laughing is the best medicine there is!"_

_Old man_… he thought to himself, _I told myself that I would change the future so that you won't die._

He seriously wanted to laugh.

Just when Gokudera started working with him too. He had high respect for him, the guy with the dynamite. He had always thought of him as a friend, a person just had a strange obsession over Tsuna, loved dynamite and had a high temper. And a bad mouth.

He knew they always thought of him as the naïve one, the one who never actually took things seriously, in regards to anything but baseball.

But still, he was more than surprised when he pointed his weapon at him. Just because of his _personality_ he didn't like him to the extent of pointing a weapon at him? Then he got annoyed.

Telling Gokudera off wasn't easy. After all, trying to correct a person's belief was hard when you don't do it much, and well, correcting a person's view on things while in the middle of a battle was even harder.

But Yamamoto persisted.

And he got through. They started fighting together.

They thought they won.

Ha… should've checked if he really was unconscious or not, huh?

He was still distantly aware of everything, of that Gamma guy interrogating Gokudera, but he couldn't hear what was being said. Couldn't move, could hear, couldn't see… how could it feel numb and hurt so much?

Even as Yamamoto slipped into unconsciousness, he thought he heard an explosion, and light through his eyelids.

He just hoped it wasn't Gamma who had caused the explosion.

* * *

Gamma stared into the dust, anticipating the person who shot such a huge cloud flame fuelled explosive at him.

"I'll give you a hint on what you want to know," a deep voice came from the silhouette who was slowly striding closer. "They came from the past." The person finally stepped out of the dust, and Gamma immediately started analysing the figure before him. "I'm not stupid though, so I didn't get switched like them."

Gamma narrowed his eyes. "Seems like you know a lot," he replied, trying to recognise him. A person with such a huge flame capacity would definitely be on the hit list. "But you should introduce yourself first. Since you're joining in on a fight, you know?"

"There's no need for that," the cloud flame user replied, "I'm in a bad mood right now." He stared at the man in front of him. "I'll… bite you to death."

They stood there for a few more moments, before Gamma smiled. "I remember; you're the Vongola Cloud Guardian, Hibari Kyoya."

A pause.

"And if I am?"

"Our intelligence departments have a few discrepancies about you. They can't tell if you're an enemy or an ally to the Vongola." He smiled, "But the most recent rumour says this: you are travelling around the seven continents investigating about the boxes."

Hibari tried to suppress his annoyance. "I wonder."

"I agree that we shouldn't place our lives in the hands of some unknown object. Did you find out who made these, and why?" He looked up with an easy-going smile, contrasting to the still smoking landscape around him. Hibari raised his head and looked down his nose at him.

"I have no intention of answering that," he said, before looking at him properly. Then repeated, "I said I was in a bad mood."

Gamma only smirked. It had been worth a shot, trying to get information from him. "So you're on the Vongola's side after all. You can't just sit and watch when your comrades are about to get killed, right?"

"That's not the reason I'm mad," Hibari answered, holding up a purple box. He couldn't care less about those two people from the past. "The reason I'm mad," he said as he ignited his ring with a Flame nearly bigger than his hand, "is because the discipline of Namimori is being polluted."

Even as he put his flame into his box weapon, his eyes scanned the two figures lying behind the Millefiore captain. Confirming that…

_They really were from the past._

He felt himself getting into an even worse mood.

_That means… _

She_ might come to this time too._

* * *

_Ah, what the hell, why am I hesitating so much for?_

_I reached out and used scissors to cut away the sticky tape. But wasn't the cardboard a bit heavy for the lid?_

_As I opened it, there was a click, and I only had a second to see what was inside. A metal contraption, something or another that… launched a small ball at me?_

_Reflexes honed for this type of stuff, I caught it in my left hand (ouch, that stung – my hands weren't ready for hard usage yet after all The doctor did say that the bandages need to be on for the next three weeks or so), but suddenly..._

_A plume of pink smoke, and then dread._

_I forgot, didn't I? _

_Irie Shouichi went to the future because of the ten year bazooka _ammunition _in the first place. That ball was probably the ammo. Got to give it to him, he's one smart cookie._

_I sighed. Shouldn't have followed my curiosity. Point proven, curiosity did kill the cat._

_At least I knew where I was going to go. They can't move a grave to somewhere else. The purple tunnel swirled around me, and I refrained from screaming when I suddenly accelerated to land on the soft grass that surrounded my grave._

_Lucky I didn't scream too._

_Because right on top of me, flying on boots fuelled by different coloured flames, were fifteen people in the black Millefiore uniform, talking softly. _

* * *

Tsuna sat on the couch alone after the meeting, staring at his Ring. Bianchi and Fuuta should probably be choosing their rooms by now. It was night-time already, and Tsuna was glad for a bit of respite from all the tension.

He had only recently just realised that the others had been uncomfortable about the situation too. It wasn't only about him here.

He had a Family to look after.

Smiling, he padded softly out of the Italian styled room and out into the more futuristic hallway. Going to the kitchen, he started munching through the food Kyoko and Haru left (it really was very tasty). He just stuffed another two in his mouth when suddenly an alarm went off around the base.

Tsuna gulped, nearly choked, got a glass of water and drank even as he ran to the meeting room where all the computers were kept.

What was it _now?_

Reborn was already there when he arrived, and he finished his glass of water as Giannini arrived puffing and plopped himself in his chair and started tapping at the keyboard. Lal Mirch arrived soon after, then Fuuta and Bianchi.

"This is!" Giannini exclaimed, eyes widening. Reborn frowned.

"What is it?"

"There was suddenly an extreme reaction from the Ring signals from the surface!"

Tsuna's eyes widened, even as Reborn asked his next question.

"Where is it?"

"It's… in the field where Brighteye-sama was buried six years ago!"

"Th-then," Tsuna stuttered, not wanting to think about something this so late in the night after such a tiring day. It can't be, not _now_ when everyone was injured, "can it be… A-Alice?"

Reborn sat there with a frown. "We must send someone out there immediately. There's a chance the enemy will find her before us. Such an extreme reaction from such a place may be a trap, but we have to take our chances–"

"But, Reborn-san." Giannini cut in.

"What?" Reborn snapped at him.

"The problem is that the field where Brighteye-sama was buried has been taken over by the Millefiore. It's deep in enemy territory!"

All of them stood stock still at that, and Tsuna found himself looking towards Reborn for help. Then Fuuta and Bianchi, but they all had the same blank thinking face on. He stared to worry again, getting more anxious by the second.

_If, if it really is Alice, then what can I do? _

"We, we should send someone there immediately," Tsuna started, steeling himself even as he talked. Then a beep from the computer, and all of them looked towards the monitor to see Kusakabe's face.

"About the recent signal that came from Alice-san's grave location, you don't have to take any action."

Reborn kept his frown as he looked at him. "Why?"

Kusakabe only shook his head.

"Kyo-san has already started heading there to take care of it."

* * *

**So haha! Alice is in the past! No, I mean, Alice is in the future! XD **

**I will answer a question next chapter (the one about if Alice, and why she can go into the future when she's cremated). Please review and tell me what you think – or encouragement, but please tell me what you think! This chapter was filler, sadly. But I think it's more light-hearted than last one, definitely. ^^ (and is that Hibari taking action? O_O)**

**See you all next week! Or next next week! Or maybe next next next week, depending on the exams. Haha?**


	28. Extra: HISTORY LESSON

Sorry guys, this really, REALLY isn't a real chapter. Hibari's being stubborn. TT_TT So I figured you all would want a good long chapter instead of the two-thousand or so words I got typed up. So this is another extra to get rid of my guilty feelings (I am WELL AWARE that I have left you hanging on the dreaded cliff. I will get the next chapter up definitely next Sunday _at the latest!)_

There is a reason though; my three weeks have been used productively. First cramming revision, the actual test, and recuperation (only not, because the teachers suddenly got their act together and marked them within the week and gave all of us students heart-attacks). Then there's another week of tests coming up in another two weeks, so WISH ME LUCK!

Extra starts now…

This isn't going to be a normal extra: instead, I'm filling you up in the history of the Brighteyes, and who knows, if you look closely enough some might be able to predict future chapters. XD

Now, the Brighteye Family started with the Vongola time, which everyone believes is around 400 years ago. As mentioned in the previous chapter, there was a huge war about a hundred years before the Vongola were founded.

The reasons behind this war was because the Western countries had started, instead of only exploring the other countries, they started exploring and trying to _dominate_ the places they went to. In our world, they didn't really try that hard in conquering China, Japan, and Mongolia, etc.

In my Katekyo, they did. At first, the Asian states struggled as they had let the Western states gain a lot of power, never thinking they would dare attack them. As they never had banded together before, the Asian states found they had war on both fronts: their 'own' side and the Western States. And getting their act together, the Asian states proceeded to hold peace-talks, momentary truces and the like within themselves and thus defeated the Western States in the next six years.

When the Asian states won, they gained much more power in world politics. The war had also let them establish connections with countries they didn't dare to before. So they started to rise.

Which is why Japanese is such a big language.

The Western States had been suffering for the last six years during the war, and losing led to confusion. Leaders were voted off seats, less experienced people replaced them and the countries were falling apart. The power had dropped a little, and it seemed like it would continue to drop. And as in war, there are always the people that benefit.

So there was a huge gap in the people with riches, and the poor. And what do desperate people do?

Resort to crime of course.

Mafia started becoming a huge thing in the Western countries, the people joining either desperate or had nothing to lose. Mafia syndicates started becoming really big, with more and more families (even overseas in Asian countries) around eighty-five years after the Eastern-Western War.

That was around the time our beloved Vongola Primo was born of course, and saw the state of Italy and his hometown, the corrupted police, the mafia syndicates murdering people. And so when he grew older, he made his resistance group with Cozart Shimon and his Guardians.

His Guardians; which includes Alayne.

Alayne was number eight, the eighth out of the original ten Brighteyes. Her mission had not been to protect Primo, but to make sure the Vongola went down the right path, no matter what the cost. There were two more Brighteyes close to her mission that she was great friends with:

Number One, Wend Graney, was appointed to the Shimon Family, and since Vongola and Shimon were so close, he and Alayne worked together on many occasions.

Then, Number Six, Qin Yu Huan. She had been Chinese before she died, and she was the mastermind who started establishing the Brighteye network, with her mission being to provide the information that her comrades needed. Alayne needed her help a lot – therefore they became friends.

The first ten Brighteyes popped up much like the Vongola, small and not much heeded. But when all ten of them, somehow without trying, became vital parts of rising mafia families, established mafia families as well as one Brighteye becoming a strong political person in China, they were quickly recognised.

Alayne met Primo in a pre-planned event; from Qin's information, she knew that Giotto's hometown had been in the area of a strong mafia alliance and his dabbling in trying to get rid of crime was interfering in their plans. So a huge group of them suddenly attacked Giotto and G on the street one day, and no-one dared to help except for Alayne of course. And Giotto being _Giotto _he made friends with her pretty easily.

She made sure Giotto met all his future friends, and kept an eye on things while successfully (as per mission details) becoming close to every single one of them.

She joined his family pretty easily, but after a fight with Wend, and knowing she was going to 'disappear' soon, she retreated within herself and withdrew from all of her companions, feeling guilty about Elena's death. But by then, Vongola had become a well-established Family, and her mission had been done after she eliminated the last threat.

But what wasn't expected was the mourning the Heads of the Vongola went through after Alayne's corpse was found. That was certainly _not part of the plot of the story Alayne tried to keep._

Bill, in all his angelic glory, had forgotten the little detail of human emotions. The people that he had been sending out for trials had emotions, the people in his stories were independent, they had emotions as _well_. With all the other people, they had all been big-bad mafia families. Not Vongola, which was literally a 'good' Mafia, and thus had gotten attached to Alayne.

The mourning of the Vongola over the Star Guardian's death nearly cost the whole Vongola, as its many enemies against Vongola's popularity took their opportunity in the weakened state of their Boss and Guardians. Bill thought that he had gotten lucky one time. He didn't need to go through that again.

So he told Qin, who then told everyone else about not to get attached to their work. Which they did. They all didn't want to mess up their trials after all.

Then Bill noticed yet _another _thing (he was pretty new to it after all) when he observed the Vongola Primo.

He couldn't let go.

Of course, Bill was well-aware of Vongola Primo and his caring personality, but he was _mafia boss._ He should have been able to let go.

But he couldn't, and Bill cursed love.

So yet another order was made, to _not fall in love._

The Brighteye reluctance to join families came with what has been dubbed as 'the second generation' of Brighteyes.

Qin, after giving her network to the person who was next supposed to handle it 'disappeared' as well, and the network grew even more. Brighteyes were becoming sought after, but with only twenty-two core members they were in high demand…

Pity was, none of them wanted to join any family, as per Bill orders. They only wanted to hang around and watch.

After repeated attempts from many families, _especially _Vongola, which most of the Brighteyes successfully resisted, the whole underground world started noticing a trend.

Wherever there was a Brighteye, there was always a major happening, and the Brighteye was mostly in the thick of it manipulating situations for them to resolve themselves.

And that's where Brighteyes' got their reputation as 'meddlers'. Or, in more pro-Brighteye opinions, 'peace-keepers'.

Then, after a few years, Bill found that human memory was a bit lacking in substance and so proceeded with giving each Brighteye the sacks of books/material so they could jog their memory when the situation called for it (for even he admitted some books had quite fantastic plots and well, it would be hard to remember all the little details).

Then where did the Brighteye credibility come from?

Well, many places. With Brighteyes raking in money from info, the Vongola Eighth started her reign as a very beautiful _woman._

Now, Mafia didn't usually have female bosses. And if they were female bosses they were tough, they had clawed their way up in ranks of respect, had to be practical mafia saints to even be considered a reliable boss. The Vongola Eighth was all that and more. Added to the fact she was Vongola?

…She was very highly respected.

Unfortunately for her, the Brighteye that was assigned to her was those really handsome womanisers you only get in shoujo mangas (_aka annoying to any respectable female mafia boss – and she was oh so very respectable)._

Unfortunately for him, she wasn't easily won over by flattery and roses in the background. Inciting a challenge for him, this led to him being more involved with and eventually tricked into joining the Family by the Eighth to increase her credibility as Boss.

He had been assigned because she was the first female Vongola Boss, and there were some plot holes in her story because it was written by a shady author with a really bad typewriter.

The writer gave even his womanising brain headaches; even though he admitted to himself he was brilliant (Humble? Him? He was the _epitome _of humble. Didn't believe? He had been bad at lying anyway…) he had trouble still.

Like, how was the Eighth supposed to jump from one epic battle scene to another epic battle scene, straight in front of the big bad boss right across the country in an HOUR?

Simple, just call the Brighteye pack mule.

But this was the thing that solidified the Brighteye credibility. The Shoujo Manga Hero (his name was Number 22 – Vincent), although his actions were more than a bit shady (as in, how he constantly hit on the Vongola Eighth) as he was always right in a plot hole when the situation gets tough, the Brighteyes were trusted more.

Even though the last fifty or so major happenings in the Brighteyes' history had already established the foundation and the walls, rooms, couches, fireplaces, bedrooms of the Brighteye credibility, it needed a _roof_. All of the fifty or so major happenings were with minor families. Not so big.

The Vongola name supplied everything a roof needed, and the network administrator at the time took advantage of it.

As Vincent had been the one who allowed them to move around from battles, give them efficiency, protected the Eighth when she was overwhelmed, stood behind her in difficult talks and became her closest confidante, it was expected that Vincent and the Eighth fell in love… But just like last time, he had died early in his first life and therefore they hadn't been together long before he retreated and 'disappeared'.

This led Bill to think maybe Vongola missions were cursed with people falling in love left and right.

Anyway, as both of the Star Guardians in Vongola History had died early deaths, they speculated if it was a trend.

It was solidified by the death of Vongola Tenth's Star Guardian dying at eighteen and one month (remember, prospective future, prospective future).

Now let's get down to business.

With Byakuran, **as a little gift I'm giving a spoiler don't like don't read until a bolded line**

is another Brighteye. But this Brighteye isn't a normal Brighteye in the normal context; this Brighteye, from necessity of her mission, helped Byakuran take over the other worlds and can physically travel between the worlds as Byakuran's helper. This power was given by Bill, by request from her.

But her story plotline details all about how Byakuran conquers all the worlds.

In Alice's, it tells of Tsuna _being the last world left and saves all the worlds._

As the ten-years-future world they were currently in was the last world to be conquered, and the last milestone for Byakuran's Brighteye accomplice to conquer, Tsuna was supposed to have died in the Choice game.

But unfortunately for Byakuran's Brighteye, Alice, who was assigned to Tsuna with a plot that says Tsuna survives, contacted Uni after the game and then saved the world…

Clashing plots? Missions _clashing?_

**So… that's something to chew on.**

As well as this question:

Alice being able to go into the future even if she's cremated.

The idea behind this is that it's only her remains that get swapped. So her ashes get swapped, and go into the past, momentarily forming a vague body shell that's shaped like Alice before being blown away. Then Alice goes back into the past, and the shell of ashes get pulled into the future again before trying to blow away.

That's when Yamamoto uses his box weapon with his fast reflexes and makes it rain, so all of Alice's ashes don't scatter. They scrape all of the ashes together and put it under a small pile of stones in front of the grave. Alice actually goes into the future under these stones, but she doesn't notice because of the Millefiore.

Hehe, so the jar doesn't get swapped. That's why Alice thinks she shattered it, because she is obviously bigger than her ashes and the bottle burst trying to contain her.

Let's not talk about volume. I mean, after all, Gokudera's older self is much bigger than younger Gokudera right? And the fifteen year old Lambo is _definitely_ bigger than the five year old, cow-suited Lambo of this time. So volume doesn't have much in it, I think.

Hehe…

There were a few more things I wanted to say in this, but then that would be too many spoilers for my liking (I only explained the Byakuran one because I couldn't really write a section from rival Brighteyes view explaining stuff… that'd be awkward).

And you know, knowing the past Vongola interacting Brighteyes makes me want to know more about them. They seem interesting, you know?

Like, writing Alayne's story. Or Vincent's story would be a fun thing to do. Haha!

ANYWAY

I created a poll again, for Alice to be with Hibari or Tsuna. I'm _really really really _interested on what the opinion is right now! Is it still a tie? Is it not a tie? And people, this will kind of (if I want it to) influence the story, so go and vote, okay? ^^

Please don't be mad at me for not posting a real chapter, but I whipped this up in an hour or so, so please forgive! I hope this was info-ey in a good way.

The next chapter will be, at latest, next Sunday. I'm preparing for tests (yet again) but I'm up to 2000 words! I think! It's going well, so please wait another week.

And if you want to, review! Maybe you have more questions, or interesting ideas that I would puzzle over. Or maybe enthusiasm in Alayne and Vincent. I like them both.

This whole thing is written, for once, in the author's point of view. This is totally strange.

colbub

colbubbie! colbub... colbubbie! colbub... - impromptu song that I blame on my sister


	29. When resting, nothing really happens

**Well, as promised, here's the new chapter! My brain is fried after doing two tests and this. I'm really wanted to get more things done, but I was really tired so I just stopped there. Sorry!**

**I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

_Reborn narrowed his eyes after making sure he pulled his fedora over his head, pretending he was asleep in the chair after his performance for Tsuna to get him to worry less. He was still fretting though, Dame-Tsuna._

_Reborn__ resumed thinking. Why would Hibari, who hated the presence of everyone except for (apparently) Kusakabe who he only tolerated, go immediately to rescue Alice?_

_Was it because she was Brighteye? That was the reason _he_ wanted her to come back._

_No, Hibari didn't care for families and titles. H__im__ getting annoyed at the sight of Tsuna was proof of that._

_The __main __thing he wanted to find out __about__, though, was the strangely muted thoughts Hibari had before he stormed out the door from 'overcrowding'. There were three things that Reborn __had __determined from his thoughts._

_One – He both disliked and respected Tsuna greatly. But that didn't give the reason why he still bothered to build a base so close to the Vongola, or why he stayed close to it in the first place._

_Two – There were more than a few reasons for him to come back. More than Kusakabe disclosed to them._

_Three – His emotions were in such a turmoil that it took even Reborn in surprise. Outside, he was still the bloodthirsty Hibari they all knew from ten years past. But inside, he thought he detected an emotion that he thought Hibari would never have. And it occupied a big part of his mind. _

_Regret._

_It was such a big part of his mind; __Hibari__ had probably resigned himself to live with it. Or maybe he was stubbornly clinging to it, not letting it go._

_And under that, he thought he detected something that even Reborn didn't believe in._

_Was that love?_

_Reborn frowned._

_That shouldn't be possible… He only loved Namimori._

_But behind the haze of regret, he thought he did sense a flicker of love. And a little yellow butterfly._

_Reborn got jerked out of his thoughts by Tsuna peering at him under his fedora. "Reborn, are you sure Alice is going to be okay?" _

"_Dame-Tsuna," Reborn said, and resignation flashed over Tsuna's face from his nick-name__.__ "Hibari comes from this era and is much stronger than us. You and the others are all tired from today. It's good that Hibari was willing to go so easily."_

"_But!" Tsuna protested, and Reborn felt Leon crawling __into__ his hand, and he took pleasure in pointing him at his student's face._

"_This is the third time you're asking this already. How many more times do you want me to say it?"_

"_Hiie!" Tsuna backtracked to the other side of the room. "I won't ask again!"_

_Reborn allowed himself to smirk._

* * *

I so wanted to bash my head on a wall. But the closest thing to a wall I had was a grave (my own… how ironic), and I wasn't about to bang my head on that. But I had to get a reality check. I couldn't really be unlucky enough to have fifteen Millefiore people floating above me when I just came here, right?

Tsuna didn't. Yamamoto and the others only got two.

Why did I get _fifteen?_

I so wanted to sigh, but I really didn't want to risk getting caught. Or open my eyes so they noticed me.

It was dark though, that I knew. So I had at least that as an advantage. Maybe I could quietly slide away…

"Hey, you hear that?" A voice straight above me suddenly disrupted the conversation they had been murmuring. Sudden silence went over the group, and I suddenly thought maybe sliding away wasn't really such a good idea in long grass…

"Yeah, I thought there was a flash of something underneath…"

I froze.

The humming noises of their boots were suddenly so very loud. Was it because of the silence?

"Ohoho, what do we have here?"

In a split second, I decided the boots weren't loud because it was silent and whipped my hands in my fake pockets. Forcing my index finger into the trigger and flicking the safety, I rolled myself up and shot towards where the voice had been.

There was a pained scream, and opening my eyes there was a man down. Wincing at how the skin felt like it was stretching too much on my hands I quickly found the others and tried to shoot them too.

Four of the five bullets I shot disintegrated under a sudden wave of Storm Flames, the fifth reaching its target. Another pained grunt, and the echoes of my shots made it seem I put out more shots than I did.

Sixteen bullets and I had already used six. Only two down.

Crap, not good.

I started running away, already knowing that the flying boots were much faster. There was one charging for attack, I knew it by the heat I felt even through my clothes. There was a road in front of me, which meant easier running, but also easier to target.

Deciding to avoid the road, I was about to swerve when I saw a car speed into view and brake, smoke coming out of the trails left on the road.

Then there was a growl of something nearly unintelligible, and I saw sharp angry eyes before the first defeated opponent landed on me and I saw black.

* * *

_Hibari didn't show his inner turmoil anywhere except __in his hands, __gripping the steering wheel tighter__ and tighter until his whole hand turned white__._

_What would he do?_

_An image of her image flashed in__to__ his mind, eighteen and already sick on the bed. Visibly tired, black rings under her eyes, pale and getting thinner, and the immediate coughs when he left the room. She had been so young…_

_He had been so young._

_Maybe he was foolish, clinging to her even after six years. He had grown old without her, and he didn't ever think he __would__ ever see her again. She was not as stupid to get hit by the bazooka. And the dead can never come back to life._

_Time, as much as he wanted it to, could never reverse._

_Foolish?_

_Always, when relating to love. He admitted that at least._

_Even the stupid not-herbivore had moved on with his childhood crush. But as hard as he tried to look, he could never find a person to match him, to smile that slow smile she had, to sit together and hear her babble about a topic as inane as pompadours. He had tried, he really did. Anything… anything to escape the feeling that seemed to follow whatever he did. The one that made him feel like a part of him was hollow._

_How hard was it to say goodbye? _

_So, so hard, when relating to her. _

_Then this scheme that the not-herbivore concocted and the Ring reaction right when he had __just __returned…_

_Could he ever redeem himself?_

_He started accelerating, eyes growing cold at a shadow on the horizon and the sounds of gunshots. Fourteen people who could use Flame enough to fly chasing after a small shadow with shoulder length hair… One went down, but the other thirteen sped up and one raised a huge axe…_

_Flashes of an image of her walking over the fields smiling at him filled his mind as he braked hard, jumping and blocking the blow of the first Millefiore man before he even realised he was there. _

_He growled his catchphrase, feeling murderous. "I'll bite you to death." _

_He fought them all, so weak he didn't even deign to light his Ring. When the last enemy had been wiped out, he looked for her._

_A small grunt from underneath a bloodied man, and a flash of yellow. He nearly stopped, but pushed the man off her and drank in the sight of her face. Then a flash of disappointment before he covered it with his mask of indifference._

_The face was too young. The eyes full of confusion and a hint of wariness instead of the warmth he had become accustomed to before her death. He helped her up, the hole in his heart a little bigger._

_Walking towards the car, a shocked Alice follow__ed__ him and __got__ into the driver's seat. His mind was strangely blank. The engine revved up, and he drove back towards his beloved Namimori, trying to ignore the familiar yellow eyes looking at him in confusion __from the backseat__._

_She wasn't his Alice. _

_But…_

_Could he redeem himself?_

_Never._

_But…_

_Hibari couldn't help the many thoughts that always led to 'but'. _

* * *

I bumped my head on the window, and grimaced when my head met the window. That hurt. This was real.

Hibari really was in the car, he had saved me and (the most unbelievable part of it all) _he helped me up_.

Now, Hibari the _don't-talk-don't-touch _me guy just _helped me up_. Absent-mindedly. As if it didn't bother him at all.

Oh gosh, did I do something drastic and change the plot? I really wish my future self hadn't. Really _really_ wished that my future self hadn't. Because if I couldn't rely on Hibari to be exactly the same (he was the one who was never changed, the huge strong spoilt child he is) then what was happening ten years into the future?

Suddenly, I was very worried.

And glad I watched all those episodes and read the manga in a matter of days. The days that I had spent avoiding Shouichi, ironically. Now I could help tweak the plot back into shape, if what my future self had done really had been stupid and I had to fix it all up. It was like the saying 'the future has to fix up the mistakes of the past' only _backwards._

Of course. Nothing could ever be normal with me.

I sighed, and banged my head on the window.

But really, what happened? I racked my brains for ideas of what could have happened as I watched the grass covered fields roll by. It really was beautiful, even when it was at night-time. Heh, these fields would be my ideal calm spot, really…

The silence stretched on in the car, but every now and then I glanced into the rear view mirror, in which I could see one of Hibari's eyes.

And once, they looked back.

* * *

The door opened to reveal one Reborn, a really tall blonde guy, Bianchi, a grown up Giannini, and Tsuna. I blinked. They blinked. The monitors blinked. I blinked again for the sake of it. Why were they staring?

Hibari had dumped me at the entrance to the Vongola Base without a word, seemingly much _much_ more in character. I had been so relieved I said goodbye.

Then he made me worried again when he nodded his head in acknowledgement.

He acknowledged me with a _nod._ And walked away.

He had _nodded_.

I went back to being worried.

"Err, hey." I said awkwardly, trying to break the silence. Tsuna started to give this really big smile.

"Ali-"

"Alice-nee!" A really loud voice came from the really tall blonde man, and suddenly I was in a hug. I stiffened in shock, before peering up. Damn these tall people…

"Fuuta. Nice to meet you again."

Fuuta gave one of the biggest grins I've seen on his face. He had always been the calm type, see, so seeing such a wide grin on his face was strange. Not that seeing his face all grown up wasn't strange. "You haven't changed at all, Alice-nee!"

"Yeah. Of course." I said as clearly as I could as I tried to crane my neck backwards so I could still see his face while still being hugged. "Umm, can you let go now?"

Fuuta just laughed again, before letting go. "You seemed to have shrunk compared to my memories. I was always shorter than you."

I scowled. Just because they were tall… I was just about to say something about his height as well when I was wrapped into another hug.

"Alice, I haven't seen you for such a long time!"

The voice was feminine. The only other female other than me is…

"Hey, Bianchi. Can you get your hair out of my face? I think I'm going to sneeze."

Bianchi let go of me just to squeeze my cheeks like those really annoying aunts do. "Alice, I haven't seen you for years and the only thing you say to me is that? I feel so hurt!" she said with a slight smile on her face.

"And I saw you a week ago. You still look like you're nineteen, Bianchi."

She laughed. "You always were blunt with your words, Alice. I nearly forgot that about you."

And meanwhile, behind all this, Tsuna was just standing there looking a little lost, staring at me interacting with the two. Reborn gave a little smirk.

"They beat you to it, Dame-Tsuna."

Tsuna immediately blushed.

"Shut up, Reborn!"

I grinned at Tsuna, walking up to him and patted his head. "Tsuna."

Tsuna looked up at me and looked really happy for a second, before looking worried again.

"Alice! You came to the future too, and have you found out…" He looked torn, and I helped him out a bit.

"Yes, I know I'm dead here."

Tsuna looked up a little desperately. "Then why are you so calm? I'm so worried about it; they say you died six years ago! That's so long…"

And noticing Tsuna was ranting (he only ranted when he was overly stressed and he was worried. Tsuna is so cute) I decided not to wait for him to stop ranting to ask my question. His rants never ended, I swear. "What are we doing here?"

Tsuna stopped mumbling to himself and looked at me in confusion. "Huh?"

"We're here to change the future, right?" Tsuna nodded. "So we just have to change the future where I die as well. This future might not be our future, you get what I mean? I won't die just yet, Tsuna," I said with him staring at me. "I'll be here for a few more years yet."

He looked at me, and I nodded.

Bianchi was dabbing her eyes in the background, and I turned to stare questioningly at her.

"It's just that, you're back again, and you're talking to Tsuna and, it's just so emotional!"

"There, there, Bianchi-nee."

All I could do was stare. What?

Yep, a few days without Tsuna and co. had already made me unused to the craziness already.

* * *

"Yamamoto and Gokudera are recovering right now," Tsuna finished explaining what had been happening for period that I hadn't been here. I nodded, matching events with the plot in my brain.

Good, nothing was off. And I knew where we were up to now.

"We're going to rest a bit before we start training," Tsuna laughed sheepishly, scratching his hair with a hand, "because we all got really beaten up. If it wasn't because of Hibari-san, I don't know how Gokudera and Yamamoto would have survived."

I smiled. "Well they did, didn't they?" (I was trying to pad on the motivational speeches, because Tsuna did seem a bit shaken up by the news of how I died). "Do you know where I'll be sleeping?"

Tsuna immediately shot up. "Oh, I forgot!"

Munching on a random apple, I watched as Tsuna freaked out in the most predictable way, and didn't bother warning Tsuna over Reborn's foot coming towards his head.

"Dame-Tsuna, Giannini has already taken care of that already."

And Giannini wobbled up, his shiny face so shiny I thought I could see my reflection in it.

"Alice-san! I haven't seen you for six years, I'm so happy to see you again!" He bowed, and gave a business entrepreneur smile. "This way, please."

I waved back to Tsuna, who was looking remarkably at peace arguing with Reborn and walked away with Giannini, who was explaining the layout of the base to me.

"Here you have the meeting room, and over there…"

I nodded as Giannini rattled out a whole bunch of information for each room and corridor, sometimes whole floors, and tried to keep track of everything.

By the time Giannini had shown me to my room with a smile, a bow and a 'you'll be staying here by yourself, so feel free to make it your own, it was your future self's room', my head was spinning from everything he had crammed into my head. Secret weapons, layouts, emergency procedures… Maybe I should just borrow the blueprint of the base off Giannini?

I turned around to ask Giannini, but he had already left. Oh well…

I turned to face the door, which opened with a _swoosh_ to admit me into the dark room.

Once the lights were on, I looked around and mock-whistled (I couldn't whistle, but nothing stopped me from trying, right?)

The room pretty big – bigger than any of the other sleeping rooms depicted in the anime. A bed lined one wall, a bed-side table sat between the bed and a smallish closet, which, upon inspection, was filled all sorts of clothes and shoes and hats and whatnot. One rack was filled with wigs of all shapes and colours, while a drawer was dedicated to a rainbow collection of contacts.

My future self sure liked disguise.

That wasn't what made me whistle though. What made me whistle was what occupied the other two walls – the biggest desk I'd ever seen occupied by several large-screen computers, a couple of phones, and two laptops. Blueprints and maps lined the walls (was that a blueprint for this base I see in the corner? No need to ask Giannini after all), and papers _covered_ with writing were strewn all over the table.

I sighed and shook my head. You'd think the world would have become more environmentally friendly in ten years, but judging from the state of my room, humans were still as paper-consuming as we'd always been.

Gingerly picking my way over all the paper, I sighed as a Post-it note stuck itself onto my foot before grabbing the blueprints for the base and exited the room.

Now… where was the infirmary?

* * *

Yamamoto looked surprised to see me.

"Alice!" He exclaimed from the bed, wrapped head to toe in bandages. "Why are you here?"

"I got shot by some ammo from the post in my apartment," I said flatly even as I picked up his Shigure Kintoki from the floor and leaned it against the bed again. "Were you trying to reach your sword?"

He immediately stopped what he was going to say and laughed sheepishly.

"No?"

And at that answer (Yamamoto is really bad at lying when he doesn't put effort into it) I moved his sword to the other side of the room and stood triumphantly over it as he looked at me with puppy eyes.

Not going to work.

"You obviously need rest. Not training."

"But Alice, you don't know how strong they are–" I cut him off, knowing this was for the plot. How else was he going to recover in a week?

"No training."

And then Yamamoto looked so much like a sulky kid without the pout and the kid part that I wanted to burst out laughing. But knowing if I did, Yamamoto would think I wasn't serious, I put on a blank face and left the room after promising him another visit soon.

Next was Gokudera's room.

Clutching the blueprint and walking those few extra corridors, Gokudera's room was still lit, surprisingly.

What was unsurprising, however, was that he (like Yamamoto) was desperately trying to reach his ring and box. The only thing stopping him was his bandages.

The moment he saw the door crack open a little, he immediately stopped. That was until he saw my eyes and then rolled his own.

"You got hit as well," he just said, eyeing me critically.

"Yeah."

And then I proceeded to do what I did to Yamamoto, putting the box and ring on the far side of the room (Gokudera did not take it as well as Yamamoto, that's for sure) and I left the room feeling accomplished. I also learnt another four Italian swear-words.

Fun.

But since it was getting late, I followed the print back to my room (now I look closely, my room was in one of the places that was built the earliest. That's why my room was so large, it was larger than many rooms in this place) and the door once again switched open.

The soothing dark blue walls had little lights that automatically switched on when all the other lights were off. I went towards the clothes rack and found clothes that were too big for me, but comfortable and in my style.

So I just pulled on an extremely loose shirt (and knowing that I grew so much made me feel proud) and a pair of pants and collapsed onto the bed. Then wrinkled my nose, because under my bed-sheets there had been sheets of planning too.

After I dropped _those_ on the floor, I prepared to sleep. Truly. I was getting sleepier now that I was thinking about turning in…

Then my head met a lump in the pillow, and I pulled out a picture frame with an incredulous look. Why was there a _picture frame_ in my pillow?

And after dumping _that_ on the floor, I found something lumpy in my mattress.

I groaned.

Was I so messy?

Ah, maybe it was because Grey wasn't here. Note to self; I had to try and keep my own stuff neat, future self or not.

* * *

The morning, I was promptly woken up by a knock on the door.

"Haru still wonders who it is though!" A high voice came through the door. A softer voice replied her.

"Reborn-kun told us she came really late last night so she couldn't greet us. It's polite to greet people first."

"Yeah, it's so nice that another girl's come here!" giggled the voice.

"Mhmm!" said the other voice.

Now, these voices were filtering through the door, and since future technology was so wonderful it wasn't disturbing at all. I turned around on my bed for something to prick me in the stomach (I hadn't finished the bed cleaning process before I dropped off) but I had been pricked so many times it didn't matter anymore.

So warm… There had been an electric blanket underneath all that rubbish, and I found the switch after a while. So therefore, instead of just mild warmth, I got full-blown heat blast from the blanket.

It's too rare I'm this warm. Can I ignore the voices?

Another sharp knock, and I groaned.

"I heard a groan!" the sharp voice exclaimed. "I thought there was no-one there after so long."

"She must still be asleep then. But it's nearly eleven, shouldn't we wake her up?"

"Yes! Breakfast's already cold!"

And then they just walked into the room, the door making its _swish_ sound.

"Hahi? Grey hair?"

I cracked open an eye and promptly closed them again. "Too bright…" I grumbled out, but they ignored me.

"A-Alice-chan!" The softer voiced one stammered and suddenly I had a lump of human plus orange hair squashing me. And then Haru (who else would go hahi?) decided it looked fun and joined in on the squashing.

Nice. I could totally breathe.

"Nngh."

"I'm sorry, Alice-chan!" Kyoko immediately tried to get off, only she couldn't because of Haru on top of her, but since Haru was waving her legs around it was pretty obvious she couldn't touch the floor and therefore get herself up and… Basically, we were a human pile. With me on the bottom.

Lovely.

"Get off," I managed with my last shred of air and officially turned blue in the face. The two finally got off before I needed CPR and I thankfully hauled in a huge lungful of air before facing them, crossing my legs on the bed.

"Hi."

Kyoko was looking kind of teary, and Haru just looked happy.

"I'm so glad you're here, Alice-chan!" Kyoko said, her eyes telling me she was sincere, "It's been so hard for the past few days!"

"Haru is very happy Alice is here too!" Haru added in her bit.

I blinked my still bleary eyes.

"I'm glad to be here too," I finally said while I slowly reached up to switch off the electric blanket. "I heard something about breakfast too…"

"Oh, yeah!" Haru started dragging me off the bed. "We cooked fried rice today!"

Used to eating sweet stuff in the morning, I tried not to sound like I was unenthusiastic. "Fried rice huh?" I said blankly.

"Mhmm!" Haru nodded, dragging me towards the door. "Though now that I noticed it… Alice, why is your room so much bigger than ours? Kyoko and I share a room that's not half as big as yours!"

I finally opened my eyes properly. "You two are probably in the guest room section of the Vongola Base. This was my room in the future."

The two looked at me, then looked at each other, then put on identical smiles before identically dragging me to the kitchen with steps that were exactly the same, and their legs moving exactly in sync.

"We really want to know how you think of the egg, Alice-chan!" They chimed together.

That was… creepy.

What did the past few days do to them? I knew they were in sync and such… but aren't they _too _in sync?

Apparently, I was the only one who thought so because Tsuna and Reborn and such were sitting at the kitchen tables, and didn't even look up in surprise when Haru and Kyoko identically walked to the huge saucepan and spooned me a bowl of rice.

* * *

Since, for some unknown reason, females were automatically volunteered for cooking, I stared at the knife and carefully put it down. Maybe I'll get lucky and the carrots would chop themselves…

"Lambo, don't do that!" Kyoko said to Lambo when he ran around the whole place playing with a radish. When he came close to me, I grabbed him by the afro. He tried to wriggle out of my grip.

"No, let go of Lambo-san!" He whined, before opening his eyes and comically freezing with some snot dripping out of his nose.

"Don't play in the kitchen," I said slowly, looking at him seriously. He gulped and offered the radish to me with a sheepish chuckle. I frowned at him, before accepting the radish and putting him down. And when he calmly walked away from me, I patted his head. "Good boy."

Then he went hyperactive again. Poor I-pin.

At least I got the radish.

"Here you go, Haru."

"Thanks, Alice-chan!" she grinned at me before staring at the carrots. "You haven't chopped one carrot yet!"

I coughed guiltily into my hand.

"I'm not that confident with knives…" I trailed off. Haru sighed, before giving the soup ladle to me and going over to the carrots.

"Okay, Haru will do it. Stir the curry, okay?"

So I happily stood there stirring curry (knowing that even I couldn't get stirring wrong) and listening to I-pin trying to catch up to Lambo who was trying to reach the 'pink sparkly thing' which was on Kyoko's head.

Vongola Family craziness.

I had kind of missed this…

* * *

The next day, I dug through the mountains of paper and trash and more paper and more blueprints and more paper and paper and paper and… a photo?

Sitting down, I held the photo in my hand. It was a seven person shot. Tsuna was there, someone that was obviously me (from the eyes), Yamamoto, Gokudera (sticking as close to Tsuna as someone possibly could), this random guy with brown hair, Kusakabe and Hibari.

It was the strangest shot that I've ever seen, and I found myself cracking a smile at my expression in the picture. Squashed between Hibari and Gokudera, only Hibari was starting to get up to obviously bite someone to death, Kusakabe had this resigned expression on his face that was shared by Tsuna, Yamamoto was laughing in the corner, and I had this annoyed/perplexed/exasperated/why-me face going on.

Heh. Seemed like I had fun till I disappeared.

I smiled at the picture, before putting it in the picture frame that I had dumped on the floor yesterday night. It fit perfectly, and I put it on the huge table before delving back into the mountains of paper.

Nothing.

I couldn't find it!

Going through the suddenly neater (or messier, it depends) room, I sighed in frustration.

There were no boxes for me! There wasn't one convenient box that was just designated to me like Gokudera, or Yamamoto.

Then how was I supposed to fight?

Better yet…

I stared at my Ring, and willed a Flame to appear but nothing happened.

How was I going to get my Flame going?

I didn't really have any resolution to do something. It was really either do or not-go-to-Heaven type of thing.

I sighed again.

* * *

Met Lal Mirch on the third day. She nodded at me with respect, and I greeted her properly by name, in which she didn't seem surprised at all (just muttered something about Brighteye knowledge) and continued doing her stomach crunches from a bar that hung from the ceiling.

I left her to it. Seemed like something she would do all day.

* * *

On the fourth day, something interesting happened. After another happing morning of stirring rice so it wouldn't burn, visiting Gokudera and Yamamoto for the sake of it and going back to my room to once again search for a box (maybe the third drawer down the right?), I got a phone call.

"Alice-san!" Giannini called to me in his high but not girly voice. "A call for you!"

I sat in front of the computer, and there a face flickered up. I blinked in surprise; it was the face in the photo – the one with the brown hair.

"Who are you?" I asked suspiciously. And in true drama queen style, he answered.

"Oh, Alice doesn't remember me! My heart is torn to shreds!"

Then a crash from the back and a creepy blonde blur going _'Ushishishishi, the prince-_' before blurring away, and a taller long haired person yelling '_VOOOOOIII, COME BACK HERE YOU-'_ chasing the blonde in the background. I blinked. The brown haired person sighed.

"Well, there goes my dramatic effect. But Alice, don't you remember?"

I gave him my biggest dead-pan face, wondering who the hell this was and why he was with the Varia.

"I'm Jared!"

Okay, why did he keep haunting me?

I said so out loud, and he started laughing uncontrollably. Which led to a green haired person with a huge frog hat pop into the picture and say in an even more dead-pan voice than me, "Cloak mushroom, can you please stop being so loud?"

Jared stopped, and held up two boxes that looked like the very things I was looking for. He nodded. Fran went away.

"Yep, me and you were such close friends in the future that you entrusted them to me to give them to you after you've died! Wait, that sounds strange…"

After definitely noticing how much loonier he was ten years into the future (but it was to be expected. Anyone who lived with the Varia for so long must've gone at least some part crazy) I pointed to them. "How are you going to give them to me? I'm going to start training in a few days."

"I'm flying over! Since you're Brighteye, I bet you already knew about the tutor pupil thing!"

I nodded.

"And yeah, well, I'm your teacher! Aren't you excited?"

"No."

He immediately went to grow mushrooms in the corner, and I finally realised what 'cloak mushroom' meant.

"You were always like that, Alice-chan…" he said in a the-world-is-so-sad-I-must-grow-mushrooms way. Yep, he was definitely a bit crazier than he was in my memories. Much more fierce in the Varia battles.

"Just come soon, okay?" I sighed. He immediately brightened up.

"Okay! But one thing I have to make sure – does your Vongola Base have any moderate sized training rooms that are built like an obstacle course?"

Giannini, overhearing this, puffed out proudly.

"Of course, we have the best resources in the world!" Then he paused for a second, before going to a computer. "Wait a bit, I might have to check."

Then after a minute, he sighed.

"No, we have many middle sized training rooms, but none that have an obstacle course in them."

Since Giannini seemed to feel ashamed, I patted one shiny shoulder.

"Err… then do you have any idea of a person who might have a training room?"

Giannini looked up, before brightening.

"Ah, yes! When you were older, you trained with Hibari-san a lot! Maybe there would be a training room like the one you want in Hibari's part of the base!"

Huh?

I didn't want to face Hibari before I got an answer to his behaviour.

"Anywhere else?" I asked. Giannini shook his head.

"That's the only place I can think of right now that is safe and secure but also a good place to train. I'm sorry, Alice-san, don't you want to talk to Hibari?"

"Well, it's not that…" I trailed off to look at the screen where Jared was yelling at Belphegor who had accidentally sliced up his mushrooms, who was throwing knives back and Squalo yelling in the background asking '_WHERE IS THAT STUPID PRINCE?' _.

Varia chaos.

I would rather be in Vongola any day. At least Tsuna didn't want to murder any particular people.

As if Jared knew I was looking at the monitor again, he dodged a knife and zoomed towards the camera. "Anyway, before you do anything, don't ever try to light your Ring before I get there."

"Why?"

Jared made shooing motions to Giannini, and he complied (but grumbling slightly) and when he was out of earshot, he whispered _really loudly_ about what this was all about.

"I know the Brighteye secret you know. You told me, all about Heaven and stuff, which led me to a series of ideas which have been accepted by the Brighteyes. We're all good friends!" And then he started with cackling before calming down. "Anyway, don't try to light your Ring."

I stared expectantly at him as he looked suspiciously over his shoulder both ways, inciting obvious curiosity from Belphegor, but was stopped by an angry Squalo just in time.

"Flames come from resolution and life force right? Well you Brighteyes don't _have_ life force!"

"So?"

"So you burn your resolution and something else instead."

"What?"

He leaned closer, his breath fogging up the camera.

"You burn up your time limit instead. Which means…" Glancing over his shoulder to make sure Belphegor was held back by Squalo, he continued whispering.

"Which means if you light your Flame too much, you 'disappear' sooner."

* * *

**DaDUN! This was so hard! I got stuck like seven times on this MY SISTER STANDS WITNESS ON THE PODIUM! I'm so tired that I'm spouting random nonsense, but please review and tell me if it really is bad or not, what you want, what you think, and stuff. Thankyou for previous reviewers and readers for sticking with me for so long!**

**Poll is UP and there's a big majority peoples! You can guess which one if you want. Fifty three voters! I'm so happy I'm crying happy tears! TT_TT**

**Now I'm TIRED. I'm going to _sleep_ now. Please do review!**


	30. Those strange laughing cloak mushrooms

**Oh gosh, thirty chapters! O_O Isn't it awesome? Is it getting too long? Maybe I should finish it soon. XD Or not. I don't know. I have so many more ideas left, haha!**

**Anyway, got a few filler episodes off here, and the plot will officially resume (you know, epic fighting scenes in the anime/manga) next chapter! Ahaha, it's mostly training here. ^^ Tests are over, so very happy, and…**

**THANK YOU REVIEWERS! YOU ARE ALL AWESOME PEOPLE! And readers! And story-alerters! And anyone who bothered to get this far! Hehe… I hope you enjoy?**

* * *

_"Flames come from resolution and life force right? Well you Brighteyes don't __have__ life force!"_

_"So?"_

_"So you burn your resolution and something else instead."_

_"What?"_

_He leaned closer, his breath fogging up the camera._

_"You burn up your time limit instead. Which means…" _

_Glancing over his shoulder to make sure Belphegor was held back by Squalo, he continued whispering._

_"Which means if you light your Flame too much, you 'disappear' sooner."_

Staring blankly at Jared's face and the mushroom in his hands, I blinked.

"It burns up… my time limit?"

Jared was about to answer when Belphegor got past Squalo in a flashy display of Storm Flames, shoving his face into the camera. I got a lovely view of his nostrils.

"The Prince demands to know what you're talking to chopsticks about, commoner!"

And Jared immediately snarled back. "Well, none of your business, dumb blonde!"

"Are you implying that the Prince is _stupid?"_

"I thought I said it _plain enough _for you to understand," Jared replied, seemingly unaware of Squalo looking at them both with a gleam of madness in his eyes. Belphegor immediately whipped out twenty or so knives, laughing creepily at both of them.

"You want to get stabbed, don't you?" He directed this to Jared, while giving Squalo the evil eye which he was happily returning.

Then Squalo yelled his signature 'VOOOOOOI!' and yelled something near intelligible and whipped his sword out to destroy the couch, which Jared immediately bristled at and yelled something in Italian to the effect of 'That was my favourite couch, bastard!' and Belphegor threw knives at him for ignoring him or something… And that was all before Lussuria came in.

Of course, all the while I was wondering why Belphegor called me chopsticks.

As I watched Lussuria twirl around them telling them not to fight (they all ignored him), not noticing the camera was still on, the door opened to admit one Levi trying to tell Lussuria the Boss wanted a beef steak. And noticing this wasn't very productive at all, I cleared my throat.

They all froze comically and stared at the computer screen where I was still watching.

"Well, see you later then, Jared. Bye."

Lussuria started twirling closer with tears in his eyes yelling something like "Alice!" and sensing impending danger, I immediately flashed a smile and switched it off.

Maybe I had been close to Lussuria or something. I honestly hoped not, really. Or maybe that was mean, and Lussuria actually had a deep and meaningful caring side that was hidden like the layers of an onion.

…Not possible.

I got up from the swivel chair, glad the mystery of the Box was gone. So I had nothing to do until Jared came here. No trying up lighting Rings because of time limit related stuff, and no boxes to analyse because Jared got them.

That is, if I discounted the fact I could go and ask Hibari if he had a training room like that or not. Something came back into the room, and Giannini's shiny head bobbed in.

"Are you finished, Alice-san?" Giannini asked friendlily. I nodded.

"Yes."

There was a pause as Giannini recovered his seat and sat down happily, the cushion immediately losing all its air. Then another pause as I tried to think of a way to ask Giannini to contact Hibari without needing me to go there.

"Err…"

"Yes, Alice-san? What do you want me to do?" he said near immediately. I raised both my eyebrows, and he chuckled and explained.

"Even when you were older, you always struggled to ask for help. What do you want me to do?" He asked again, as I blinked to process the information.

"Umm, Giannini, can you contact Hibari's side of the base for me?"

He smiled, and immediately started tapping on his keyboard. "Of course, it's for the training ground, right? I'm sorry for the Vongola base not having a training ground that you need," he added ruefully. I tried to reassure him it was fine. I'm not sure it worked, but Giannini suddenly smiled when he got a connection.

"Hai, here you go, Alice-san."

Giannini swivelled the desktop screen around, and I saw a close-up of Kusakabe's face. He was still chewing a piece of grass, amusingly.

"Alice-san, what do you want to ask of Kyo-san?" he asked kindly, somehow talking and not dropping the piece of grass all at the same time. Feeling a bit strange at the kindness (since we didn't really talk much in the past) I put my serious face on and placed my hands firmly in front of me.

"I have a question to ask Hibari about regards to a training ground."

Kusakabe's eyes seemed to think for a few moments before lighting up in understanding. "Ah, you mean a middle-sized training ground?"

I blinked. "How do you know?"

His eyes twinkled mysteriously. "Ah, you and Kyo-san trained together a lot later. I got to know you quite well around then."

"Ah," I nodded, understanding the sudden friendliness. "Well, can I use the training ground?"

Kusakabe's eyes suddenly held a mischievous glint in them. It was well-hidden under professionalism, but it was still there. I was suddenly suspicious. "Well, I don't know, you'll have to ask Kyo-san yourself, Alice-san."

I narrowed my eyes. "Well, can't you ask him for me?"

"It'll be best if you asked him yourself, Alice-san," he assured me.

I frowned at that. "If everyone can pass messages along you, why can't I?"

"I'm very busy right now, see," he said with perfect calm, "and I can't really go to Kyo-san right now. If you go, you'll help me a lot."

His face was perfect, and I would have believed him if it wasn't for that twinkle that was still in his eyes.

"Okay," I conceded and he smiled but I put up a finger. "I'll do that if you answer one question."

"What is it, Alice-san?"

"Why is Hibari so much nicer than before?"

This time, the grass in his mouth drooped a little before coming up straight again. Kusakabe's face was a little blank when he answered. "I'm sure you won't know, but you and Hibari fought together many times in the past before you died. In fact, you became one of the few fighters he respected."

Fighters Hibari respected; Ten-years-later Tsuna and Reborn. And now, apparently me, who sucks at everything mid-range, can't really shoot targets from over twenty-five metres away, and is a bit clumsy at close range fighting.

"I don't really think so, Kusakabe."

He smiled. "Not a fighter in that sense, Alice-san."

Huh? I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate, but he only shook his head with this really small melancholic smile on his face and then nodded. "I'm very busy, so Alice-san, I'll open the door so that you can come through to request Hibari-san's assistance."

"Umm… Thank you?"

Kusakabe only nodded, and Giannini kindly asked me if I needed help to go to Hibari's room. In response to that, I whipped out the huge blueprints of the base, and Giannini laughed and said it was 'just like Alice-san!'

Maybe when I was older I turned dotty and started lugging blueprints around?

But anyway, I followed the blueprints to the Hibari-entrance, where it was already open. Stepping from the bright, sci-fi setting of the Vongola base to the Foundation felt like those horror movies. You know, where the hallways all dark and scary.

Since the blueprints in my hand didn't cover the Foundation's layout, I stood there awkwardly at the entrance, leaning a bit on the wall and staring at the purple beams that let Reborn walk around safely in the base. Then creepily, footsteps started echoing down the corridor, and around the corner came one…

Hibari Kyoya.

He was wearing a traditional Japanese male yukata (I think), which was expectedly black. His hands were tucked into his sleeves, which were immaculate, and his hair was ruffled with a little yellow feather in it. I resisted the urge to laugh to ease the tension, and looked back up at him (because he was just so tall…).

It really wasn't intentional that we started a staring contest. Because really, no intention of sounding childish, but he started it. He just came around the corner, stopped right there and _stared._

And the most, most disconcerting thing was that it wasn't a glare like I was used to.

It was just… a stare.

So I tried not to blink, walked forwards and started talking.

"Hibari, I know you really don't like crowding," I started off and Hibari just kept staring, "but for training I need a middle-sized room built like an obstacle course and there isn't one in the Vongola part of the Base." Pausing there, I smoothed the crinkles of the blueprint and looked up to see him _still_ staring.

I tried not to gulp. Hey, wasn't I supposed to be the one with the scary eyes?

"So, can you please lend me a room for training? I promise we'll try to stay quiet."

Hibari has the most perfect blank mask I have ever seen. The oversized sweater I was wearing suddenly seemed that much hotter, and I wished I chose a t-shirt instead…

There was a pause, where I didn't fidget, but didn't really do much else other than stare at Hibari's yukata (near two metres he was to my estimate, which was practically forty centimetres taller than me). Then finally, the yukata moved. "Very well."

I was shocked, I tell you, because I didn't really believe Kusakabe implying that Hibari would listen to me.

I looked up to see the ever familiar Hibari smirk. It was smaller than usual, but it was there. I nearly heaved a sigh of relief.

"In return, you must bring some tea leaves from the Vongola kitchens to me every time you use my training rooms."

"Huh?"

"It is because I dislike the type of tea that we have left in our base."

What was he, a spoilt twenty something-year-old Lambo?

Wait, imagining Hibari ever acting like Lambo was kind of nauseous…

Partly annoyed, partly glad (Hibari was still Hibari, thank goodness), I grumbled something akin to assent and he smirked again before lapsing back into his solemn stare face that he always seemed to have on.

"Now go. You're crowding."

"Thank you, Hibari." I bowed, before walking as fast as I can back through the purple bar things. Then turned around and bowed again because I knew Hibari liked a ridiculous amount of respect and I was asking to train in his personal research rooms.

Strangely enough, he was still standing there.

Awkward.

Something was still worrying me though… Why was he acting so nice?

Maybe I should ask Reborn. He knew everything, anyway. Or maybe Kusakabe. No, he's too loyal.

Maybe Fuuta.

Yeah, Fuuta's nice. Maybe if I push him a bit, he'll answer… He had been, after all, a pushover for his friends back in the past. If he doesn't answer, that means he grew a spine. Something to profit on both ways.

* * *

Studying the blue-prints, I finally got the whole picture of the base. Everything I needed, or the places where the main events happen anyway,uhHHH was all near my room so if anything was going amiss, I knew I would get there quickly.

In the days of Yamamoto and Gokudera's recovery, the manga didn't cover anything while the anime had several fillers that were totally unnecessary and bothersome. But I-pin doesn't show any signs of being sick, and although Lambo is a bit bored…

Immediately as I said that, an alarm broke out, and the little lights that lit the room turned red, and the desktop computer on my desk automatically turned on. I read the message that flashed on the screen.

_[Alert: Someone tried to force exit from Hatch C from the inside]_ the computer said, a little security camera image on the side showing only the bottom on a rope net and a swinging tail.

I sighed.

A filler episode coming up, I see…

Hatch C was right outside my room nearly, just two left turns and I would arrive there. But should I bother the plot? These fillers were a bit sketchy; some of the coincidences might not become true with another person there.

Of course, I could help prevent a whole lot of trouble…

I settled with picking up one of the four mobile phones on the desk, scrolling through to the contact list and picked a contact from the H list.

"Err, sorry for calling you, Hibari."

There was a pause, where I distinctly heard one of those hollow bamboo sounds from those Japanese gardens. Then, a response.

"Hn."

Knowing this was his question in Hibari language for why-are-you-calling-me, I answered.

"Lambo's going to get kidnapped, and that person's going to disturb the peace of Namimori with a violet tornado, I think."

"Hn."

This was now the question why-should-I-help, and I sighed.

"You get to maintain the peace of Namimori, and the guy's a cloud user. You can get an extra Cloud ring that way."

"Hn."

"Thank you, Hibari."

"Bring extra tea leaves."

And straight after that, he just disconnected the call. There came back the annoyed yet relieved feeling.

Why was Hibari so Hibari?

I just sighed, and left it as one of the mysteries of the universe. Navigating around the computer and telling it to leave the alert alone, I stood up to walk around. Hearing Lambo whining about lollipops around the corner, I turned the other way to somehow arrive at Yamamoto's room.

Why not? I shrugged and went in.

Yamamoto was faking sleep. It was so obvious.

Sighing, I dragged a chair over and switched off the light.

"Yamamoto, I know you're awake. No-one smiles that happily when they sleep. Not even you."

And as expected, Yamamoto's eyes sheepishly opened. "Haha, Alice!" he smiled ruefully. "Can't ever trick your eyes, huh?"

"No," I flatly replied, raising my eyebrow at the Shigure Kintoki one again leaning so very innocently against the side of the bed. Yamamoto followed my gaze and laughed again.

"Fuuta helped me. Nice kid. Though he really isn't a kid anymore is he? This time travelling stuff gets to me sometimes!" he babbled, grinning all the while and scratching at some bandages. A look at him made him stop, but he kept on talking. "Sometimes it seems so unreal you know, feels like it's a sci-fi movie or something! It's really cool!"

I raised an eyebrow at that.

"Really?"

Because somehow, I severely doubted that. Yamamoto didn't falter under my gaze, and bobbed his head as much as he could lying down.

"Yeah!"

"Tell me the truth Yamamoto," I said solemnly, "what do you feel about your father's death?"

Yamamoto froze for a moment, before laughing. "Haha, what are you suddenly bringing this up for, Alice?"

"What do you feel?" I pressed, knowing this was not the best way, nor the most tactful way of doing things. But Yamamoto was a straight-forward type of person – but that stopped the minute things got serious, and the natural assassin side of him won. He was the Rain, calm-headed, and he knew when to do things and when not to. More than one occasion, when he wasn't baiting Gokudera, he would deliberately say some idiotic thing to lighten the situation.

Like his 'oh, the Mafia game?' jokes. Tsuna and the others believe it of course. It's easy to figure out he doesn't really think it's a game though, not after this.

His father was too important to him.

"What do I feel?" He repeated slowly, closing his eyes with a smile on his face. "I don't know Alice, what am I supposed to feel?"

"Shock," I immediately answered, "then disbelief, sadness, and the rest depends on your personality. Are you strong enough, Yamamoto, to go on even knowing your father got killed because of you and your friends? By what you're doing now?"

"That's Alice," Yamamoto murmured still with that smile on his face, "a logical answer for everything."

Then there was a pause, and Yamamoto opened his eyes. "You don't believe me when I say Mafia is a game anymore, do you?"

I shook my head. "No. I never really believed it, only sometimes I doubted. You are a really good actor when you want to be, Yamamoto."

"Haha, that's something else I'm good at then, other than sports."

Contemplative silence, before Yamamoto looked at me again. "You know?" I looked at him, and he looked back at the ceiling. "Before Tsuna came to my life, I only cared for my old man, the shop and baseball."

I sat in silence.

Even the Rain had to get things off their chest after all. Washing away everyone else's sorrow by being the calm stability must be tiring all the time.

Someone must, at least, force them to tell and listen.

"So when I lost baseball, it was like my life had come to an end. Imagining losing your future, Alice. What would that feel like?" He looked at me. "I wasn't trying hard at academics, I was throwing everything I had into sports. Then you start losing your form, fail to get into a team, break your arm. It's like seeing the very future crumble before your feet."

I understood all too well. The feeling that the future was only one big gaping black hole waiting to eat you up. Maybe some of that feeling was in my body language, because Yamamoto widened his eyes, before smiling.

"So you do know. That makes it easier to talk about." He reached an arm up to scratch his head. "When Tsuna saved me, it was like my life suddenly widened. It wasn't as if it brightened or anything, but suddenly I saw. Tsuna brought Gokudera and you, Alice," He looked at me again grinning, "and suddenly the world was so much wider."

Nodding, I indicated him to continue.

"Instead of just looking at the glove that I knew I had to throw the ball into perfectly, I saw the whole baseball field. Did you know, Alice? That's what friends make you do."

He laughed again, before going back to staring at the ceiling. I stared at it too.

"And friends make you do the stupidest things, even without them asking. They make you want to do it, regardless of the future." He looked at me and smiled the brightest smile I've seen yet. "They make you realise the present is more important."

I raised an eyebrow. "But even after your life story, Yamamoto, you still haven't answered my question."

His smile dimmed a bit. "Yes, you picked up on that? I shouldn't have expected less."

"Do you want to talk about it? If you really don't, because you still haven't gone over it, then please tell me and I'll go away with my answer."

"No, I'll tell you."

So I sat in silence once more, before Yamamoto sheepishly chuckled again.

"If baseball was my future, school was my present and my father was my past. My old man was always there, from the start, cheering me on, telling me I could do anything. He was just always there. Being dead, my old man being dead… is not one I would ever have imagined.

"But it just reminds me that even my old man can die, that we are all human." He grinned up at me. "I can change it. That's what this is all about, isn't it? If we beat these bad guys now, then they won't come in the past to defeat us, and kill the people important to us."

A pause.

"Do you regret it?" I asked softly. Yamamoto tilted his head in confusion. "Do you regret becoming Tsuna's friend?"

"Why?" He said, puzzled.

"If you hadn't become his friend, you would still lead the simple life of baseball, school, and your dad. No fighting, no killing."

"But no friends to laugh with, invite to the sushi shop with, clean the dishes with, and play that Mafia game with," he said the last one with a little laugh. "I don't really get the point of thinking of alternate endings. This is the now."

"I have to learn to be like you then," I mused, knowing I thought a little too much.

A flash of white teeth in response.

"No, Alice, that's your best trait!"

I raised an eyebrow at that, and smiled a bit in response. "You're as deep as I imagined you to be, Yamamoto."

"Thank you for making me tell you, Alice," he told me instead. "I needed it."

This time I smiled. "Well, you're all going to train tomorrow, so don't fake sleep and get some real sleep in, okay?"

"How do you know?"

"Information collector, remember?" I tapped my eyes. "But don't worry, some information even we information collectors never sell."

"Haha!" Yamamoto laughed, then opened his eyes with a serious gleam in them. "I never doubted you."

And we left on good terms, me learning so much more about Yamamoto other than his shallow character portrayed, and I don't know about him, but I think he learnt a lot about me too.

Maybe.

After all, Yamamoto is one of the most observational people I have ever known.

* * *

"Get yourself to the training room," came a squeaky voice in my ear, and I grimaced before sliding out of bed just in time to see a little shadow bouncing out the open door.

Sliding on another baggy jumper, I padded down the corridor into the kitchen.

"Hey, Kyoko."

"Alice!" She smiled at me, and she held up some toast. "Jam or butter?"

"Both." I said, leaning on the doorframe waiting for it. After two slices, she handed it to me on a plate, but I just took the two and started meandering down the corridor slowly. "Going to train today."

"Alice too?" Kyoko asked softly, surprised.

"Yeah. I think I'll need it. Bye! Yesterday's corn soup was really nice."

"Thank you, Alice. Good luck with your training!"

"Ah, don't say that, Kyoko, makes me feel like a soldier or something."

A giggle, and I went down the elevator to be the second there. Gokudera was already there, punching the air saying he was first.

Don't ask me what he was doing. Turning around happily, he immediately scowled when he saw me. Huh.

"Sorry I'm not Tsuna. Hi Gokudera."

And Gokudera gave a sincere effort to be civil.

"Hello Alice."

We nodded at each other, when the elevator hissed open and Yamamoto stepped out smiling. "Haha, hi Alice! Hi Gokudera!"

Gokudera smirked. "You're so energetic, baseball-idiot."

Yamamoto smiled back. "You too, Gokudera."

And sensing some male bonding (maybe it was their fight together) happening, I stepped backwards to hear the elevator hiss open to admit Lal Mirch and Reborn.

"Dame-Tsuna is late again?" Reborn said, shaking his head.

"Juudaime's coming soon, Reborn-san!" Gokudera immediately tried to help (or defend) Tsuna. "Maybe we're just early!"

The elevator opened again.

"Yo," Yamamoto turned around and smiled at Tsuna.

"Good morning, Juudaime!" Gokudera said happily.

"Tsuna." I nodded, and Tsuna's eyes widened.

"Hey, you two!" he said to Yamamoto and Gokudera obviously looking at where their injuries were.

"We're going back to training, starting today," Yamamoto said with that ever-present smile on his face.

Tsuna stepped forward with a slight frown, "Are your injuries okay?"

"Perfectly fine!" Gokudera burst out, sudden enthusiasm a very sharp contrast to how he was before Tsuna came in. But that was Gokudera, I guess, so not expecting much else. "In fact, they're so good I don't know what to do with myself!"

"I'm glad!" Tsuna smiled at them both, and Gokudera smiled wide as well. Added to Yamamoto's smile, I felt like I was the only one not smiling.

But when I force smiles I look constipated…

"So the four of you are finally together," Reborn said, capturing all our attention to him.

"As I told you, we're going to start a new training program today," Lal Mirch said with her arms crossed. "We're going to start a special individual assault enhancement program."

Tsuna and the others asked their questions, and when the topic of tutors came up, Tsuna automatically thought of Reborn as his tutor. It was kind of cute really, but Reborn instead turned to Yamamoto.

"No, I'll be training Yamamoto."

Yamamoto looked a bit shocked, but I guess everyone except me had been expecting Reborn to be automatically designated to Tsuna.

"Eh? Me?" Yamamoto pointed to himself with a little blush.

"EH? Reborn's going to train Yamamoto? …Will that even work?"

I patted his shoulder. Tsuna didn't need to be jealous after all. "You'll just be getting another tutor."

Gokudera looked at my hand on Tsuna's shoulder and I let go. Haha, Gokudera's reactions are so fun…

"Take it easy on me, okay?" Yamamoto laughed, scratching the back of his head.

Gokudera whipped his head around like an excited puppy. "Then who do I get?"

"I'll be in charge of you," Bianchi's smooth voice floated over from the doorway, and he comically froze.

"T-that voice…" Gokudera said slowly…

"Bianchi!" Tsuna exclaimed, and Gokudera immediately collapsed. "Gokudera-kun!" Tsuna looked at Gokudera in concern.

"Y-you're kidding right?"

"We really are family, my Storm flame is by far the strongest," Bianchi said calmly, a slight smile on her face as she lit her Ring. "When we're done training, I'll give you something. It's from father."

"Father?" Gokudera looked up at Bianchi's face… only to collapse again, and Tsuna once again hovered over Gokudera.

"Reborn, there's no way! You better cancel this!"

He was interrupted however, by our favourite Cloak Mushroom.

"And I'll be taking care of Alice!" Jared popped out from no-where, his cloak fluttering in the breeze. Then he hauled me away so fast I was literally flying under his arm, and with my blank face firmly in place I looked back at Tsuna's own what-the-hell face.

"Jared, what the hell?" I grumbled as I went through a doorway I never really expected to go through.

"Alice-_chan!"_ he said, hugging me tightly, "I missed you so much!"

"Get off me."

"Get off her," came the growl from behind, and Jared looked up with a smirk.

"Jealous I can do something that you can't bring yourself to do, _Hi-ba-ri?"_

Then came the 'Hn' response and when Jared let go of me he stalked through the doorway, once again in a suit, a huge Flame suddenly igniting on one of his Rings as he inserted it into his box weapon.

Roll, wasn't it? That cute porcupine?

It flew out, and crashed into something next door. I stood up immediately, just before he fully went out into the big training room.

"Thank you for training Tsuna, Hibari."

There was a backwards glance.

"It's for the baby," he said simply, before he went through, the door automatically shutting behind him.

Jared, for some reason, started madly chuckling at his reason.

"For the baby, he says! He was always so round-a-bout, even now after six years he's dancing around? What's he dancing around _for?_"

And looking at my confused face, he burst out laughing, before dragging me into another series of tunnels, all the while laughing his head off.

Yep, he definitely went mad after all those years with the Varia.

Somehow, we landed up in the Foundation, then a few turns later, in a largish sized room that was built like, well, a maze.

"Now, Alice-chan!" He said brightly, "Let your flames burn!"

I blinked. "But doesn't that affect my time limit?

Jared laughed. Again. "Of course! But there's a ratio to it, see? One hour of flame burning reduces a week of your time span. You get it?"

I nodded.

"But there's a special thing to Star Flames, is that you can get a lot done with so little flames that if you're really good at controlling it, you can get it down to one hour of flame reduces one day of your time span. Got that?"

"Yes."

"But I told you not to try light your Ring right, before I came? That's because of how to activate your Flame needs some special requirements." Jared winked at me, before wagging his finger.

"The world you came from didn't have Flames, so you have to adjust your body to it. When you flames do start burning though, it comes out as a huge burst, and needs to be controlled by another star flame user. And that would be me!"

He smiled with a thumbs up. "I may be born here, but my father was a Brighteye! Awesome right? I'm originally a Sun Flame user, but the Star Flames mute it down a bit. So I'm a Sun/Star Flame user. Aren't I cool?"

And as he seemed to be expecting a response, I nodded. "Yeah, how cool."

"Anyway, your Flame burns in a different way. Which is a good thing," he added as an afterthought, "since most Brighteyes aren't really motivated."

Information overload. Huh?

Jared just continued babbling. "Your Flames burn when you need them. That's it. So just think this; I need to train for my mission so let me use my Flames, and you can use them!"

And just when he said it, a Flame burst into my Ring, and Jared's eyes went huge as he lit his own Ring. "Whoa! You didn't have to do it that fast!"

"When you said it I thought it," I said as calmly as I could, looking at the grey flames nearly as angry as Hibari's cloud flames. "Not my fault."

Jared said nothing in return, only grumbled something under his breath and suddenly wrapped his own yellow-ish grey flame around mine, forcing it back into the Ring. It was a slow process, and not much interesting at all, but I had the strange feeling of something sliding up my arm from the Ring as he did it.

After at least ten minutes, he sat down with a phlump.

"Phew!" He exclaimed, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. "Done. Though there's no next time, warn me when you're going to do something like that, okay?"

I didn't bother replying, just stared at the Ring.

So if you think it, it comes out?

_I need a little trickle of Flames to train for the next hour_ I thought calmly, and a little sheen of flames trickled out of my Ring and seemed to slowly drip to the floor.

They were still Flames… but why were they dripping?

"Ah, you started again without warning me. Oh, whatever. Alice, Star Flames are different in the way that you can control where they're going. This is an obstacle course, right? Okay then," he pointed at a vaulting horse in front of me, "cover that with your flames. Try and spread it as evenly as possible."

While I tried to do that, Jared once again starting talking non-stop.

Doesn't he ever stop talking?

"You know that Sky flame attribute is Harmony, storm disintegration, cloud propagation, rain tranquillity, sun activation, electricity reinforcement and mist construction right? Well, all of that is well and good, but Star flames, I think anyway, are the coolest because!"

And then he pauses there, right when he was supposed to say something useful.

"What?" I said through gritted teeth, as controlling the flames was harder than I thought…

"Star flames, Alice-chan, attribute is _concealment_! The reasoning behind this is that you all don't really belong here anyway, and the Flames reflect the person's personality for Flames. You all have a sense of alienation with the whole world, so therefore STAR FLAMES!"

Then he burst out laughing just as I finished coating it.

I stared in surprise. Jared grinned. "So what do you see?"

"This doesn't make sense," I muttered to myself, "I can feel the vault under my flames but… why can't I see it?"

"Ooh, you have really good Star flames, Alice-chan, just like you did in the future. It's whether you're lucky or not if you get strong Star Flames or not. The stronger ones can make something invisible. Weaker ones just camouflage, like mine." He ruefully poked his Ring. "Oh well! At least I can pretend to be a chameleon!"

Staring at him once again laughing his head off, I turned around and tried to spread my flame a bit thinner.

"Your Flame is still trickling out, Alice-chan!" Jared noticed. I glanced at him.

"What of it?"

"You're just wasting your time span that way! Our flames are special remember? You can control them even when you're not providing new flames! Just maintain a link with your Ring, but don't add any more flames into it."

"How?"

"Just think it. It's that easy. I think it's too easy, really, but Bill said that the easier it was for us, the easier it was for him to arrange it, and so I think he's just being lazy…"

I ignored him (tuned him out) and thought.

_Don't provide new flames, but maintain connection with the flames already out_

And the Flames did as they were told. Which made me think…

_Cover the floor_

And it did, and suddenly I was looking down into a computer room, the floor invisible now.

_Cover the obstacle walls_

And the Flame moved, the walls not visible now, and I could suddenly see the room clearly. The Flame spread itself thinner and thinner, until suddenly… all the flames suddenly disappeared and I was looking at the start of the maze with the vaulting horse again.

Jared, who had been watching while chatting on about one thing or another, turned to me.

"That' was really good. You were commanding it weren't you?"

I nodded.

"Well, that's well and all, but don't give orders that are too general! Like, you commanded something like cover the walls and the floor and the obstacles or something like that, right?"

"Yes, and suddenly it disappeared," I answered, looking at my Ring in puzzlement.

"You didn't have enough Flames to maintain it, that's why," Jared said, "You had stopped your Flame flow, so you had only a set amount of Flame to use. You ordered it to cover too much surface area; more surface area than it had. That strained the connection it had to your Ring, and when your flame isn't attached to your Ring…"

He shrugged. "It disappears, and you lose a good portion of useful Flames. I mean, pure Star Flames like yours can burn for five hours until it goes away. You just wasted so much!"

Then he suddenly started scolding me.

"You should have listened to me first, idiot!"

I only smirked.

"Have you been taking lessons from Lussuria, Jared? You're scolding like him."

He immediately froze.

"Lu-lu-LUSSURIA? You think I sound like _Lussuria?_"

He went to the nearest corner.

"_Oh no, I sound like Lussuria… I must've eaten too many of his cookies, but he makes them so nice… I don't want to sound like Lussu-nee… Oh no, I started calling him by his horrid nick-name…"_

I sneaked away from his mushroom cultivating to try and coax Flames out again.

* * *

"This rice is good, Kyoko, Haru," I said after I swallowed my mouthful of rice. I was a bit late to dinner, having nearly forgotten to deliver Hibari's tea leaves. Only Kusakabe was there today though, so I just gave them to him, bowed, and ran back to a delicious delicious dinner that didn't me to cook.

They smiled at me.

"Thank you, Alice-chan!" Haru said brightly, spooning me some more, before looking at the two sleeping boys in worry again. "They're sleeping again! It's the third day!"

I shrugged, before ploughing through the next bowl of rice. Haru absentmindedly filled up my bowl again, with Kyoko watching in amusement.

"Alice, you're eating so much!"

"Training makes me hungry," I said through a mouthful or rice, before scabbing a bowl and putting another scoop of rice, fish, lettuce and three apples into it. "Bye, I'm going back to my room for some concentration training."

"Okay, bye Alice-chan!"

I waved, too busy chewing to do much more with my other hand full.

Stepping back into my room, I examined my hands. Their bandages didn't need changing right? I wouldn't know how to do it anyway. Shrugging again, I plonked down.

The first day had been flame training, second day agility training while using flames to conceal myself. It was hard, since I had to run through an obstacle course that consisted of knives flying at me while trying to keep the Flames on me even while moving. Skin stretches you know? It's hard.

Third day was training with my guns and chopsticks. Which basically mean fighting, which I was obviously much worse at, compared to Jared.

Got some handy tips though. This time, I didn't have to conceal myself with Flames, thank goodness, but he made me concentrate on keeping them in mid-air with unlit candles on them while we were training.

Tiring, but very educational. The way Jared was constantly talking was a bit of a pain, but…

It was bearable.

Actually, it was quite fun. Delivering tea leaves was stressful the first time, but when the next day Hibari was just sitting there sipping tea calmly with Hibird on his head, I settled the small bag of tea leaves next to him and left.

He didn't seem to mind.

…I don't think so.

But basically, I was making good progress, the plot was going good, and what else could I wish for?

I shouldn't have asked that.

* * *

_Chrome stared at her Ring._

_Mukuro-sama… where are you? Where am I? She looked around Kokuyo Land, the abandoned couch where Ken had sat playing video games, and Chikusa had been leaving for a shower…_

_Where were they?_

_A tiny sound from the doorway, and she immediately looked up, scrambling to her feet as delicately as a hurried bird could._

"_Ken?" She asked, as she knew Chikusa didn't make noise when he walked._

_Instead, a man in white uniform came in._

_Glo Xinia smiled, baring his teeth._

* * *

**The plot is on again! Haha, I went through like, seven episodes with this. XD The next one will, I think, have the Irie Shouichi infiltration plan I'M SO LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUNGER HIBARI COMING BACK since ten years later Hibari is so hard to write.**

**Please give your opinion! TESTS are OVER muahahahahaha, so I'll probably update next week!**

**Hehe… OVER 100 PEOPLE VOTED! ME ISH SO HAPPY THAT I'LL GIVE AN EXTRA!**

**This is an emo Yamamoto extra, showing his feelings since I had a Yamamoto moment in this chapter. If you don't want your happy mood to end, please don't read this. ^^ Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

_Even though they knew that they weren't feeling as much pain as them, it still hurt._

_Wherever he looked, it hurt. _

_It hurt to see Tsuna lock himself up in his room. It hurt to see Ryohei suddenly go on a two week leave. It hurt to see Gokudera curse over documents alone, without another grey haired person sitting with him and baiting him on with remarks. _

_It hurt not to have his tea drinking buddy with him._

_Yamamoto smiled at a random face, forcing the corners of his mouth up because if he didn't hold up the Family now, who would? He continued down the street, sensing the heavy clouds and knowing that he should hurry back to the base._

_He was the Rain, which washed away the Family's tracks, the calm soothing rain. He was the one who the others eventually turned and opened up to, knowing that they would get gentle acceptance. They never realised that it just made him bear the burden more._

_Surprisingly, it was Gokudera who cracked first. One day, when they were sitting on the veranda, Gokudera just simply said one sentence. He was drinking alcohol, and he took a drag from his cigarette. Yamamoto for once didn't admonish him._

"_It's strange when she's not here."_

_And Yamamoto, sipping his tea simply nodded. Jasmine. Her favourite type of tea. And they continued to sit there, looking at a cloudless sky filled to the brim with stars twinkling at them. _

_Next was Ryohei. It was strange, but not unwelcome. He just suddenly opened the door, and Yamamoto gladly let him in. He chattered a bit, talking about nonsensical stuff about boxing, but he always understood the Sun Guardian. Knowing he needed someone to just talk to._

_So he listened. And gave him a tissue when he had to blow his nose._

_When Tsuna came down for the first time in two weeks, he was fawned over by Gokudera. And following summons, he went to Tsuna's office at ten in the morning. And there he was, looking at him with hollow eyes._

"_How are you, Yamamoto?" He asked. But Yamamoto knew how to turn the situation around._

"_How are _you_, Tsuna?" _

_A question, asked simply. Silence from the other end, but he had learnt patience. So he sat himself in a chair and tried to take his boss's sadness away so he could hold the family together again. The Family needed him the most now._

_One night, a person suddenly opened the door and he immediately flashed into attention, holding his Shigure Kintoki at the ready only to see a sniffy nosed twelve year old._

"_I'm sorry Yama-nii but Tsuna had his door locked and Kyoko-nee and Haru-nee aren't here and I don't want to go to __ahou__-dera or Ryohei-nii and I-pin isn't here and I just had a nightmare about Alice-nee and I don't want to sleep in that cold room…"_

_Yamamoto just smiled and rolled a bit to the left._

"_Come here, Lambo. You can sleep here tonight."_

_Walking down the street did wonders. Strolling slowly, his only warning of rain was the sudden smell of rain moistening the air and suddenly it was pouring. A child walking beside his mother who hurriedly dug around her bag for an umbrella pointed up to the sky._

"_Look, mama! The sky is crying!"_

"_No, it's rain dear." She said absentmindedly as she snapped the umbrella open. Yamamoto looked up at the sky and questioned _

_Because he was the Rain. He collected their sorrows, and let it go for them. They just didn't know how heavy it all was. But didn't rain only come with heavy clouds?_

_He would just have to bear their sorrows and wash them all away._

_Yamamoto smiled a smile that no-one would ever guess was fake._


	31. Just kind of disappear

Sushi? What was Tsuna blabbering about up there with his face all red? I blinked up at him and groaned something to the effect of 'mumble wumble' and just flipped over.

"No, Alice, please stay awake!" He yelled in his teary resigned voice, which in my sleep hazed state translated into Tsuna yelling at Reborn for kicking his head _yet again_. I pried open one eye and stared at him and wondered where Reborn was. He smiled immediately when he saw me open the eye. "Yes, you're awake! Come on, Alice, we have to go to the kitchen to prepare sushi!"

Then he proceeded to try and drag me out of bed. And seeing his pitiful tugs on my arm, I sat up and stared dazedly at him. He smiled encouragingly, those faces people put up for those parents seeing their toddler waddle towards them. Of course, not liking being compared to a toddler in any state of mind, I scowled and stumbled up to get my clothes.

After changing (Tsuna behind me seemed to do a mouse squeak thing and trip over several piles of paper to turn around), I kind of slid on a piece of paper to face a quivering, red-eared Tsuna.

"Tsuna," I stated in surprise, "why are you here?"

In response, Tsuna only gave a kind of choke/gurgle/_why-are-my-friends-like-this_ scream.

Turns out that they were all preparing a morning sushi making thing for Gokudera, Yamamoto's idea to cheer him up from his lack of progress in his training. Tsuna had become normal again, smiling and waving his arms around from the grand scheme he and Yamamoto had concocted. I nodded and smiled, then patted his head.

"That's nice."

And Tsuna just accepted the pat on the head with a chuckle and a sheepish grin.

"We're here!"

"Yo, Alice!" Yamamoto grinned and waved, "ready to make some sushi?"

Kyoko jumped up with a grin, and came towards me. "Yamamoto said the guys would be taking over breakfast today, with his sushi making skills! I'm really looking forward to it!" Linking our arms together, she dragged me towards the table and Haru, who had her mouth full of pins and some weird looking short male yukata things.

"What are you doing, Haru?" I asked curiously, leaning over her work.

"Pheh!" She replied, trying to talk through pins and failing.

"Nice." I nodded.

Kyoko giggled. "She's making outfits for Tsuna-kun and Yamamoto-kun!"

Haru spat out the pins and did some sewing while Yamamoto took out some rice from the rice cooker.

"All done!" they called at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed, Haru holding out her outfits and Yamamoto putting down the pot of rice to shrug on Haru's work. "Haha," he laughed, "it's actually quite comfortable!"

"Tsuna-san," Haru said while holding out the yukata-thing with a small blush, "please try on your wife's home-made outfit!"

Tsuna spluttered. I backed away from Haru's sparkly smile and left them to it, picking up a bamboo sheet and staring at it curiously. Yamamoto padded over and explained.

"Haha, I'll tell you what you do with this. I never thought I would be teaching Alice something! Haha!"

After five minutes…

"Yamamoto, you're really bad at explaining."

"No, you do the herk to the chhhh and then shooom! And then it turns into a sushi!"

I nodded. "Okay Yamamoto. That's wonderful. I'll go sit in the corner and await your lovely sushi instead, okay?"

"Haha, okay! You sure you really don't want to make sushi?"

"Yeah." I nodded solemnly.

"Okay then," he said while scratching his head. "When Gokudera gets here we'll make lots of yummy sushi!"

"You do that," and promptly plopped into a chair where Kyoko slid tea in front of me.

Jasmine. Nice.

"Haru, stop that!" Tsuna exclaimed at Haru who was waving those weird bamboo sheets around (thinking about it, I still didn't know what they were for…)

"Good morning, Juudaime," Gokudera said with a slight smile on his face as the door slid open to admit him. Then his eyes widened at Tsuna and Yamamoto wearing Haru's yukata-thing. "What's… with this get-up?"

"Today the guys make breakfast!" Haru replied happily, still holding the bamboo thing.

Kyoko joined in. "Yamamoto-kun is in charge. You'll be making roll sushi with your takezushi skills!"

I sipped my tea.

"Even though we're using frozen ingredients, it should turn out fine!" Yamamoto grinned, holding up the tray of defrosted salmon to his face.

"We've been training so much recently, it's time for a break!" Tsuna said in his nice way, smiling at Gokudera who still kind of had a stunned look on his face. This didn't last, for it soon turned into his preoccupied face, him turning his gaze from Tsuna.

Gokudera looking away from Tsuna wasn't really an everyday occurrence. If this happened, it was something big. There was a flicker of a frown on Yamamoto's forehead, but when I looked at him while sipping my tea, the happy-go-lucky smile was still there obliviously. Bianchi and Reborn continued sitting there, their back towards the doorway.

"Sorry, Juudaime…" Gokudera said softly, "I'm not in the mood."

Kyoko and Haru both stared at Gokudera in surprise, as both had already caught on to Gokudera's way of agreeing to everything Tsuna says with his loud brash tone. This calmness was not him.

"Alice-chan," Haru murmured, "do you know what this is about?"

I nodded. "But it's not my place to tell."

"B-but, we don't have enough people," Tsuna replied with a hesitant smile on his face, "and we still have to make Lal Mirch's portion. Even though she doesn't eat with everyone, she's fussy with her meals."

This time it was my turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Really?" I asked to my two female friends. Kyoko nodded.

"When she had a burnt piece of tomato on her plate, she refused to eat half of it! She's kind of unapproachable too, so we just make sure she doesn't have anything she doesn't like in her food. Reborn-chan gave us a whole list!"

She waved to the list pasted on a cupboard. I turned my raised eyebrow at that.

"I noticed it but I thought it was a shopping list or something."

Haru did a little giggle. "Silly Alice-chan, how can we do shopping when we're not allowed outside? There're the bad people on the surface remember?" Her face held a flicker of sadness and fear at that before her smile wiped it all away. "You know so much that sometimes that I forget you don't know everything!"

"Now I know something else, don't I? Thank you for providing the information, you two."

They both raised their eyebrows at me, (Kyoko had a problem with raising one eyebrow so she raised both). "You're too formal, Alice-chan!"

So Lal Mirch was a picky eater. I could give this titbit of information to Spartan Teacher Number Two. She would be happy to know a bit more on the Arcobaleno's daily lives. But wait… was she still here, ten years into the future?

But she was always there, you know? I chuckled a bit into my cup. Of course she would be there.

While all this was going on, Fuuta had pushed Gokudera into the kitchen with his gentle smile that would make you feel guilty if you denied him something. He had a permanent puppy dog look, that Fuuta. Giannini had somehow squeezed in as well, blabbing about how he couldn't cook, and I-pin and Lambo had also started peer pressuring Gokudera with happy exclamations of 'Sushi!'

Funnily enough, it was Lambo who incited a normal reaction from Gokudera.

"Stupid cow! Don't touch me with handfuls of rice!" Gokudera yelled in his usual way, nearly tipping over before Fuuta pushed him back up. Yamamoto just laughed, and Tsuna stood there staring for a second or two before rushing in to stop them from fighting even more.

After stealing two roll sushi (I finally knew what the bamboo sheet was for – Yamamoto's explanation had failed epically even in sound effects) I left the table to go straight to training; after only stealing a small box of Jasmine tea leaves for tomorrow (I wasn't going to Hibari's base today).

Surprisingly enough, everyone had been happily making sushi on the same table without argument for twenty or so minutes. I think Tsuna had been surprised as well.

Peaceful times were rare indeed.

There had been instructions left on my table from Jared – he was doing something outside today for the Varia. What, I didn't know, but the message he left was quite interesting.

_Today's training for today – PRANKING. _

Then there was a little star at the bottom and a person smacking into an invisible door.

I think I knew what he meant. This should be fun.

Ordering some Flames to cover me, I slid the door open and walked down the corridors as quietly as possible. Passing the breakfast rush, (Tsuna passed me without a glance, Yamamoto glanced my way before shrugging and Reborn looked straight up at me, but with an unfocused little smirk) I made Tsuna trip over a small box, Yamamoto swerve to avoid an invisible pipe and Reborn smirk.

I wasn't going to pull something on Reborn, for Heaven's sake. I wasn't suicidal.

Going in and out of corridors, I found being the invisible man and playing pranks was fun. Like, making Giannini smack into the door of his computer room. Making that invisible was like making it open.

Of course, I didn't need to know Giannini favoured pink love-heart underwear. Kind of like Tsuna, that.

Strange underwear tastes, I mean.

Somehow, I got to the end of a corridor, where piano music was leaking out of a door. I covered a little spot with flames, and peered in to see Bianchi playing the piano like a professional.

I was going to slide away when the piano stopped.

"Alice, why don't you come in?"

How did she notice me?

I opened the door with one invisible hand (took a few tries, that. I didn't know exactly where my hand was, after all) and stepped in.

Bianchi looked at the seemingly empty doorway and gave a tiny smile.

"Going about invisible again?"

I slid the Flames away from me into a ball that floated into the air.

"Training," I said by way of explanation. The one-word sentences work as well as anything.

She laughed. "I remember those training days. Once you made poor Tsuna trip over the same box twelve times, smack into the door of his office seven times, and think he had an empty plate for two meals!"

I blinked. I was that evil?

…Maybe. I might've been bored or something.

"What was that piece that you were playing?" I asked, "It was pretty."

"It was one of Gokudera's favourite piano pieces to listen to. He finally mastered it before he ran away."

I was surprised. "But it sounded difficult."

"Yes, it was. Gokudera's a genius, you know. He can do so much when he puts his mind to it." Her eyes hardened. "So I know he isn't applying himself to the fullest if he can't finish my training."

There was a small pause that I interrupted with a cough.

"He'll be fine soon," I said with a little shrug, and slid the flames over me to hide from Bianchi's part surprised stare. "When this is over, I think you two will reach an understanding of sorts."

And Bianchi only laughed.

"I had missed your half-prophecies, Alice."

I hesitated a little bit, before chuckling along with her.

* * *

"_There were few," Kusakabe said with the grass still clenched in his teeth, "but we don't think Mukuro died. That is because after the incident, we noticed Chrome get captured."_

_Tsuna smiled happily. "Chrome was alive?" __h__e exclaimed before drawing back a bit__.__ "__S__he looks like she is so badly injured…"_

"_That's why," Gokudera realised, "if Mukuro really died then Chrome wouldn't be alive…"_

"_Right now Chrome is missing without a trace," Reborn said flatly towards the group, "so we should look at this 'supportive' man in the picture next to Chrome in this picture."_

_Kusakabe gave a grunt of surprise. "As expected, that is exactly correct. Hibari is stepping on one of Mukuro's people."_

"_What?" Tsuna asked a bit confused._

"_Doesn't this information bother anyone else?" Lal Mirch said to Giannini, who replied shakily with not much to contribute._

_Kusakabe shot a look at the ex-Arcobaleno. "I feel the same way. The fact remains that the man remains unidentified. Unless we investigate, we will never know if he is relevant to this case."_

"_If he isn't related, then we'll be out of leads…" Reborn murmured. "If this is an information problem, we could just ask Alice as a Brighteye to figure this out for us. They would have the information we need within the minute."_

"_Oh yeah!" Tsuna exclaimed, "Alice is from a really good information family."_

"_The Brighteyes," Gokudera murmured, "of course, Alice is from _them_ so if we pay the price we can get any information we want…"_

_Yamamoto gave a quizzical grin. "Haha?"_

_Kusakabe shook his head. "It won't work." Reborn sharpened his gaze at him._

"_Why not?"_

"_Even when Alice-san was still alive, she wouldn't give out certain details even with the highest money offer we could afford. We learnt to know the signs to one of these incidences early on. This should fit one of those."_

"_But… But Alice sometimes tells us stuff that when we don't even ask! Wouldn't she tell us this at least?"_

"_It would be worth the try, but it would probably prove pointless. Furthermore, there is another thing to worry about. This." He held out the Hibird picture… a Hibird picture with an eye of an owl on the top left hand corner. _

"_This… is Mukuro?"_

* * *

Which reminds me…

Sushi morning. Chrome fight. Mukuro. Owl. Ryohei goes and saves the damsel after the fight.

I should give a call to Ryohei. Going back to my room and concentrating on making myself as hidden as possible, I picked up a phone and went through the contacts list.

Ryohei.

Pressing the call button, I waited.

"_You BASTARD!" _was the first thing I heard from the phone. Thank goodness I remembered to hold the phone away from my ear. _"How dare you EXTREMELY disrespect Alice by using her PHONE?"_

"Ryohei, calm down," I hurriedly said into the mobile, "it's me."

"_It's ME? Calm down? How can you EXTREMELY tell me to… wait, that voice. __Can i__t extremely be… Alice?"_

"Yes, it's me. Time travel, you know, ten year bazooka."

"_It is Alice! Oh, I'm extremely HAPPY!"_

"Yes, but Ryohei, mind going for a stop to Kokuyo land? There's someone I want you to pick up."

"_Eh? Okay. I was going to go there anyway. I got a call from Jared."_

"Jared?"

"_Yeah! We get on EXTREMELY well. He's a pretty extreme guy, you know."_

"Well, thank you anyway. Bye."

"_I'm extremely moved that you called me, Alice! I'll go to Kokuyo land with double the speed!"_

No, that was bad. He couldn't arrive during Chrome's fight. Or maybe it was good, and if he didn't speed he would be late?

Oh whatever.

"Please take your time. Bye."

And I finished the call before he could say much else.

Job well done?

I'll have to wait and see, I guess…

* * *

Inside Hatch A, I stood there fidgeting with my long sleeves, the dark grey polyester fabric stretching and very slowly going back into shape, only for me to stretch it back out again to watch it try and get back into shape and failing.

What was in the boxes I was leaning on anyway? They were pretty uncomfortable.

Just as I was going to be nosey, the door opened with a little beep of recognition from the palm reader and the retinal scanner. It hissed open to admit one really tall guy. I squinted up, since he was right behind the light.

"Ryohei?"

"Alice!" He exclaimed loudly, his smile ever so intact.

A loud yell from somewhere disrupted our would-be-conversation, and Ryohei chuckled, tilting his head to the side and walking towards the meeting room where Tsuna and the others were. "That's Squalo's message coming through. Let's go."

We went through the corridors.

"I didn't really want to go to the meeting," I confessed as I trotted a bit to keep up with his long strides. "They would interrogate me for information I can't give."

"Ah, they would probably extremely understand," he said over his shoulder. I ran a bit so I could walk side-by-side and looked at Chrome in worry.

"She should be fine; I'll alert Bianchi to go to the infirmary…"

"Okay, you do that! I'll report to the Boss first." He gave a laugh, before hurrying away.

I went to Bianchi's personal kitchen and poked a head in. "Chrome just came in and is in bad condition. I think you'll have to help treat her, Bianchi."

Bianchi looked up from her poison cooking. "Oh, that's fine. I was about to put this cake in the oven anyway. Do you want to try it after it's finished?"

I gulped.

"Err, it's okay, Bianchi." I laughed nervously, "I'm still _really full_ from the sushi."

"Oh, okay then." She wiped her hands on a towel, and putting it on the sink she walked out. "Lead the way, Alice."

As we walked, she chatted on about how the snake venom she bought wasn't as corrosive as she thought, and I nodded and pitied the poor person who would get it shoved in their face. At the infirmary, I gave a nod, and she smiled at me before entering the infirmary.

I stepped back and continued my training of being an invisible woman.

Maybe if I stopped breathing so hard. Yes, nice slow deep quiet breaths in and out. Now hold that type of breathing.

It was going quite well when Bianchi stepped out.

"I'm going to get some IV bags, she's malnourished and needs some nutrients in her. Can you watch over her until I'm back, Alice?"

I shrugged.

"Sure," I replied, trying to talk while keeping the breathing pattern going.

"Thank you."

She gracefully stepped away, and I went in and sat next to her bag. This reminds me…

I took out the little tracking device.

It's not as if it matters where it is until the Millefiore attack. I'll just have to remember to give it to Hibari when he tells Chrome to make her own organs.

Yeah, that'll work.

Probably.

He was a lot nicer than ten years ago, after all.

The door hissed open, and Bianchi came in with a bag filled with weird yellow liquid and I smiled.

"Kyoko and Haru are cooking, if you want to know."

"Awesome. I'll be going then."

Bianchi nodded, and I left.

Maybe I'll catch Ryohei off guard. Make the door invisible?

I rushed to the kitchen and was just in time to slide my flames over the door and Ryohei bang his head on it.

I snickered and moved away.

This was pretty fun…

* * *

"_Byakuran-sama…"_

"_Yes?" Byakuran asked, staring at a marshmallow between his fingers._

"_Are you sure you're not going to take action?" Piercing gold eyes looked at him. "I've given you the information."_

_He laughed, before sliding his eyes to stare at her from the corners of his eyes. "It's fine. Everything is going well__,__ from the looks of the work being done __by__ Sho-chan."_

_She'__d__ worked too long with him. She knew he wouldn't listen to her anymore, stupid male pride. She got up and left, tucking black hair behind her ear. _

_Something wasn't right. Glo Xinia wasn't supposed to have his fingers broken with his fight with Chrome, or should __she __say, Rokudo Mukuro. Then he would have revealed the tracker to the Vongola Base, which would have forced the Vongola into a state of panic and attack their own base in Japan straight away, giving the Millefiore an advantage._

_Why wasn't that happening? _

_This was giving her a bad feeling. She gave a blasé nod to her subordinates (she only answered to Byakuran, which gave her power near a __Captain's__. Not that she needed it. These were just minor characters, what was important was the plot)._

_It had always gone right. She had even requested the power to jump worlds for her story, in which it covers Byakuran's victories in every single world and became the world conqueror. After that, she had a lot of work to do, making the multi-world paradise that Byakuran eventually __created__ from the tyranny of fear and mindless drones he had generated._

_But this world, this last world had a problem. This Byakuran was too laid back, even with information stuffed into his face, he wouldn't act._

_That stupid Shouichi-kun._

_Sho-chan indeed. He should know the value of her support to him. Why was this Sho-chan ruining everything?_

_Yes. She knew there were two versions of her story. One was Sho-chan not betraying them, which leads to the less troublesome part of the plot. Then there's Sho-chan who does betray them, which leads on to the bothersome Choice battle where the Vongola insect is finally crushed and the universe is finally dominated._

_It all alludes to Sho-chan betraying them or not._

_And that stupid Sho-chan never show__s__ signs of betrayal until he really betrays them. But there was this one marking point, one point where the decision of him being a betrayer or not is decided in the plot._

_Glo Xinia and his battle._

_So why wasn't Byakuran doing anything? Get the Vongola out of the way and they were done!_

_Snapping at a few background people, she stomped off to her room._

_Urgh, was it so hard to want this over and _don_e with? Sure, Byakuran was a nice looking guy, but having seen ten-thousand versions of his personality, she wanted off._

_And that nagging feeling._

_She knew that it was always right. Something was interfering with the plot yet again. How many times had that happened? She laughed harshly to herself._

_What? About seven-hundred and sixty-two times? Yeah, around that. She had perfect memory after all. _

…_what was the number again?_

_Who cared. She dealt with them all anyway. And this would be the same._

_Logging into the Brighteye network, she tried to find traces of what was going on. It wasn't really a trace she found. What she found was like a huge file of information. A massive one._

_What was this? Sliding her mouse over it, she was suspicious._

_A huge file of a Brighteye assigned to the Vongola brats? Those useless, weak, no-good Vongola people? Why was a superior person such as the Brighteyes with back-trash like the Vongola?_

_This might be the reason of the plot change._

_After all, the Vongola had been partly responsible for about five hundred of the plot changes that could've occurred._

* * *

I yawned and sneezed. Was someone thinking about me or something?

* * *

_Hibari looked at the note he was writing with perfect calligraphy __for__ his past self._

_No, it was too abrupt._

_He was too dignified to scrunch it up and throw it away, but he folded it and placed it neatly to the side before trying again._

_In this huge room, it was the perfect space for no crowds. Only a Japanese garden he had constructed and presented nonchalantly for a colleague. And if he closed his eyes now, a phantom of his colleague sipping the cheap tea from the Vongola base and staring at the plants would be sitting across from him, before directing bright yellow eyes at him and asking him an inane question._

_In which he would respond with an 'hn' and she would smile, and he would wonder at how it didn'st seem crowded._

_But when he opened his eyes, she was gone._

_Partly because of him. If he hadn't tried to push her away from the car, she wouldn't have had that injury, which led to her disease. That Varia Star herbivore had tried to convince him otherwise, but he was observant. _

_He knew that she didn't really start degenerating after her eighteenth birthday. It started much earlier on._

_He never said anything. _

_She could handle herself. It would be a damage to __her __pride if he __had __said something. Those were his thoughts, for he would take offense if that had happened to him. He understood himself. He did not need to understand others._

_He looked coolly down his nose at his letter, and folded that as well before starting a new sheet of paper. _

_Instructions to what to do would be a bad idea, with he himself still hating orders. A warning might change the future, and he would rather get stabbed than change his own memories._

_So he settled for one thing._

'_The Clouds hide the Star from its viewers, but then realises the Cloud hides the Star from itself. Looking down is a matter of __direction__, but looking up and seeing one strength may be more effective than staring down at ten-thousand weak herbivores.'_

_He didn't like it._

_But he didn't fold it either._

_Getting up slowly, he softly walked out of the room and into the one down two corridors. Instead of a futon, there was a bed. Much smaller, dustier, colder. It was for her, as she didn't like futons. And on the cupboard was a photo frame, its face turned down, avoiding the dust._

_He flipped the photo frame over, felt the hint of happy memories, and put it face down again before padding away down the dark corridors into his own cold room._

_She was and is his strength__,__ no matter what people may say._

_She weren't chains or weakness. _

_She had been more like…_

* * *

**HAHA, why a fortnight? It should probably be like this soon… since I have school and my mom dumped two tutors on me. You know Asian parents. That's why I couldn't give you a chapter last week. I'm sorry I couldn't end it on the infiltration battle (I could've, but I had to do something before that first and I found that I would need a WHOLE EXTRA SECTION) so I'll just try and promise the infiltration next week with a few battles thrown in and the Byakuran character Brighteye thingo officially introduced.**

**Hope you enjoy. This was filler. Sigh.**

**Oh yeah, to people I PM – I'LL REPLY YOU LATER. To people who reviewed – I LOVE YOU. **

**And Accessblade told me this, but did you know there was a Stop Online Piracy Act in the US Congress that can ruin fanfiction forever? They're still debating it, but to people who read this story! Spread the word and there's a link to a petition on **SeptimaDesu's **homepage. XD**

**That's it. I'm tired. Too much math and English. Urgh. And I have work experience.**

**WHERE ARE THE HOLIDAYS, DAMMIT?**


	32. Lessons have to be learnt

**Chapter! Official note at the bottom - I hope you enjoy. ^^**

* * *

I was minding my own business. I really was. Just walking around, not even invisible, playing with my chopsticks, following the sounds of Lambo and I-pin's voices (I had been nominated for it, sadly) and I had just turned the corner when I heard Gokudera shouting something akin to baseball, then Yamamoto's shout of "HOME RUUUUUN!" And, turning my head and seeing the pink blur that flew past me, I had a very bad feeling.

Sure enough, it exploded.

I rubbed my head. Ow... If I had been a normal person, I would've gotten brain damage from that hit on the head...

There was a sound from behind the dust cloud. Gokudera's mutter was a bit disembodied through the smoke, but Yamamoto's voice rang clear and loud.

"Haha! That's interesting!" A tall shadow laughed, and I sighed and stood up.

"Who threw that?" I asked in my most annoyed tone, walking through the dust and facing all five of them. "I hit my head there."

"Alice!" Tsuna exclaimed, wide-eyed. "Are you okay?"

I half-heartedly shot an irritated glance.

"What do you think?" Then I looked away from him. "Where are you, Lambo? I know you're here," I called out, as he had hidden the second he saw me. I wasn't that scary, was I? He should've gotten used to my eyes already, right?

This was all interrupted by a green flashing light, and a mechanical voice repeating "_Emergency Alert Level B. Emergency Alert Level B. An explosion has been detected in the premises."_

I sighed, and moved off, not even bothering to find Lambo or I-pin anymore. I wanted to sleep.

Kids are so tiring...

Just as I was turning the second last corner to the refuge of my room, Ryohei saw me. He smiled and started walking faster before hooking an elbow under my chin and dragging me along the corridor back towards where I had just escaped.

"Alice! Just in time! We're all going to where that EXTREME explosion was!" he said enthusiastically, grinning his head off at the empty corridor.

I could only choke out unintelligible excuses of why I didn't want to go where the explosion was.

Darn Ryohei.

And so, I was standing next to a bemused Ryohei looking at Gokudera who was shaking Lambo around like a rag doll. Yawning, I ignored the ruckus.

Didn't get a good night's sleep yesterday night... This was such a pain.

So I just sidled away when everyone else was figuring out the security system. It wasn't that important anyway.

But just as I was going to go into my room and my lovely _bed_, a metal door blocked the way. I stared at it in gloom. Giannini just said something like 'it was a temporary measure' and 'this was just going to continue until the security system was repaired' in that cheery, reedy voice of his.

Even Heaven seemed to be against me entering my room. I groaned and leaned on it.

Sometimes Vongola family chaos was so troublesome.

Thinking about it, the last few days had been pretty peaceful. Sushi making, training, nothing out of the ordinary. Makes people forget that sometimes there was a dangerous Mafia group that wanted to kill us all right on top of our heads... literally.

Smirking to myself, I wiped my forehead. Wasn't it getting a bit hot in here? I never dealt well with heat – where was the air-conditioning?

Wait... hot?

Security systems and Lambo burning his butt... on what? The stove? I mean, he did that many times before, wanting to steal food only to land on a hot stove and crying and wanting lollipops in repayment. Or maybe he burnt his butt on a barbecue, or a pan, or that takoyaki machine that Giannini invented for him.

Oh yeah, that takoyaki machine, and Lambo burning his butt on something that wasn't the takoyaki machine but something much more serious. Like...

Shucks, it was the first power generating room, wasn't it?

The metal door behind me moved, and my beloved bedroom door was revealed, and it automatically opened to let me feast my eyes on my comfy bed. I slowly got up and stepped in, to wrinkle my nose at how my room was even hotter than the outside.

That settles it.

I sighed and stepped out again, opening the blueprint and finding where the first power room was.

Let's get this over and done with.

* * *

Stepping out of the elevator to the sixteenth level of the base (Giannini said his research room was on the _fifteenth_. I seriously have to get them to learn their numbers), I nearly staggered over from the heat. Urgh, how hot was it in here?

Walking towards the only door in the corridor (this explains why Lambo thought that was the takoyaki machine), I flinched at the heat.

Gosh...

"Lambo, I-pin!" I called, not bothering to hit the door and summoning a small ball of flames instead, covering a small patch of the door with it and making it transparent. And there the two were, huddled at the bottom of the door.

I-pin responded first.

"Eh? We're in here!" I think she called, but her voice didn't carry through the door; I read her lips instead. Lambo didn't stir.

I couldn't stop the twinge of worry even as I cursed the living daylights out of him. He blearily opened his eyes and staggered up and yelled, much more effectively than I-pin. Always knew that he was the loud one.

"Save us, Alice! We're boiling to death!"

"Don't touch the door, it'll burn your hands," I said to them before looking back to the elevator and taking out my phone with my right hand, ready to call them because _they were late. _

Just then, the elevator behind me opened, and Fuuta widened his eyes at the sight.

"I-pin! Lambo!" He ran forward, acknowledging me with a nod and kneeling down to their level with his hand placed on the door, yelling their names and relieved to see them respond. First time I saw him so worked up, that door was enough to dry my face. I wouldn't imagine even trying to touch it.

"Wow, the door's really hot," Yamamoto said with his hand a few centimetres from the door, with even his smile faltering.

Fuuta's mind finally caught up with him, and he called Giannini in the control room. "Giannini, open the door to the second power room!"

I knelt down on my knees, and mouthed to them that _it would be okay_. I-pin nodded, and Lambo just saw it, and started trying to run through the invisible door towards Fuuta and me, but I-pin held him back. Thankfully.

"Understood," Giannini's voice echoed through the corridor, followed by the tapping of keys before a slightly panicked reply. "I can't open the door! There's a malfunctioning of the system in the second power room, and the door's not responding!"

By then, Lambo and I-pin were jumping (I was trying to get them to stop, because that was just a waste of energy) and they were both yelling something. Fuuta took one glance at them through the door and visibly calmed himself down.

When he opened his eyes, he was focused. "Lambo, I-pin, listen to me. There should be an activation switch in there to stop the machine!"

I-pin yelled something than wasn't heard, but I translated for them.

"I-pin just said that it won't work, because Lambo destroyed the switch."

Widening the range of my Flames on the door, they soon saw the smoking switch, visibly broken and burnt.

"Stupid cow," Gokudera muttered, as usual behind Tsuna's left arm, "damn that stupid cow!"

"Isn't there anything we can do...?" Tsuna said with his voice quivering.

That sparked the action. Fuuta lost his calm.

"Lambo! I-pin!" He started banging on the door, as if trying to get the door open by his fists alone. I stopped him, pointing to his burnt hands and the unmoving, steady door.

Gokudera exerted his own logic on every hard situation. "Juudaime! Let me blow up the door!"

He lunged, only to get reeled in by Ryohei just in time. I breathed a sigh of relief before nearly suffocating from the steam billowing up from the door. "Wait a minute, tako-head!"

"Why are you stopping me, lawn head?"

I ignored them and continued looking at Lambo and I-pin, before turning to look at Tsuna, still holding Fuuta back. His eyes were wide, and his arms were shaking from where I was restraining him. "Lambo, I-pin..." he said, "what can I do?"

I continued staring at Tsuna, and Reborn, on Yamamoto's shoulder, caught my line of sight and smirked. I nodded at him, before turning to the two little ones beyond the door.

"It's going to be okay," I said, out loud this time, and moved to reveal Tsuna in Hyper Dying Will Mode, sucking my flames back into a ball in front of me, making the door visible again and hiding Lambo and I-pin.

Fuuta immediately stopped and turned. "Tsuna-nii," he said with a relieved smile, Ryohei standing to the side with a smirk.

And Reborn only continued to smirk.

Tsuna slowly forced the door open, and I-pin and Lambo stood in awe of the bright orange flames that Tsuna exuded. Then he stopped, and scooped them both up and away from the partially open door, the heat billowing out in waves now that there was an exit.

I quickly retreated to the elevator away from the heat, the others slower to follow as they watched Tsuna hug them both to his chest and let his Flames die.

"You're safe now."

* * *

In the infirmary, I stood in silence in the corner as all the others stood with happy smiles on their faces, around Fuuta bandaging Lambo's butt. I knew it got burnt!

But that wasn't the issue right now.

Everyone looked up as Giannini made his third announcement of the day. "Everyone, there is no need for worry. The program has been completely repaired. There is nothing to worry about anymore."

They all smiled in relief.

"That's great!" Tsuna exclaimed.

I stepped forward. "It's not great, Tsuna," I said flatly.

"Huh?" Tsuna turned around, his smile dropping a bit.

"I have something to talk about to Lambo. Please no one interfere." I shot them all a blank glance to reinforce my statement. Every single time someone tried to scold Lambo, Kyoko or Haru would stop them, or Tsuna would stop from the cute looks Lambo shot up. But this time, it went too far.

If no-one was going to reprimand them, it had to be me, right?

I sighed.

They were technically my responsibility today, anyway.

I plopped down on the bed, crossing my legs and staring at Lambo in front of me, who was tentatively sitting on his bottom.

"Lambo," I said as seriously as I could.

He looked up at me, to kind of shrink under my eyes. "What? It wasn't Lambo-san's fault!" He said defensively.

I shook my head. "No, it was your fault. Stealing Giannini's key was already bad behaviour," I said, "but also sneaking into a place where you're obviously not allowed just adds to it."

"But Alice, they got off the wrong floor," Fuuta tried to defend him, and Lambo immediately turned towards him smiling.

"Yeah, yeah, it wasn't Lambo-san's fault!" He said, trying to hide behind him. I frowned, and tugged him back, before frowning at Fuuta for interrupting.

"You may have gotten lost, and that may excuse you from going into the wrong room, but why meddle with controls that you don't know how to use? You could have asked for help, and I know I-pin was trying to stop you. Of course, all this could have been blamed on childish behaviour, but the thing is this time, Lambo," I stared into his eyes, which were starting to tear up and go into his default puppy dog look. Most people stopped here. "You pulled I-pin into your behaviour."

The whole room was silent by this time. Tsuna looked torn between wanting to stop me, and staying put from my glare. Fuuta had a frown on his face, and I knew he was thinking this was too harsh but also staying put. Yamamoto just had a blank face on, and Gokudera had turned away.

I think they all understood what I was doing.

Lambo needed to know what he had done.

"I know that this time you were saved, and I know that you've been in countless troubles but this time it was life-threatening. You were nearly killed, and I-pin along with you, who didn't do anything wrong but follow you. Aren't true men supposed to protect their friends?"

Lambo was full on sniffling now. I sighed.

"Fuuta was very worried about you. Can you say sorry to him?"

"Sorby..." Lambo muttered through his tears.

"And I-pin as well?"

"Sorby..." He said again.

"A thank you to Tsuna?"

"Danku."

"Good." I nodded. "Have you understood that you're responsible for your own actions?"

Lambo was silent, but I let him go for this one. Playing the villain wasn't nice.

I silently left the room, patting I-pin's head and whispering to her that it wasn't solely Lambo's fault, so next time could she protect him better?

She nodded, and I finally got to go back to bed.

Ah, the blissful vestiges of sleep.

* * *

At dinner, Lambo was as loud as ever, but kept shooting glances at me. I just chomped through my meatballs, and when I finished I stacked my dishes up and walked towards the sink. But when I yawned, my cup fell off my plate onto the floor.

Good thing it was one of those traditional Japanese cups. Sturdy enough (or lucky enough) that it didn't break, I was about to stoop and pick it up when a little black and white hand picked it up and jumped to place it on the sink for me.

I blinked in surprise to see Lambo fidgeting a bit, and I placed my dishes alongside the cup, and smiled a bit as I pat his head, before ruffling it a bit.

He beamed up at me, and bounced back to the table to steal meatballs from Gokudera's plate.

I suppressed a chuckle.

So the kid had a cute side too, huh?

* * *

"_Kyo-san, it seems as if we have an unexpected guest," Kusakabe said respectfully through the partially opened door, before it slammed open to reveal the one and only, Sasagawa Ryohei._

"_Yo, Hibari!"_

"_No, please don't barge in like this," poor Kusakabe protested, but Ryohei just passed him anyway._

"_It's okay, I'm good friends with Hibari anyway!" Ryohei said jovially, ignoring Kusakabe's resigned look, requesting that he needed more manners. It got ignored. Or unnoticed._

"_I heard you're here to inform me about Sawada Tsunayoshi's decision."_

"_I knew about that. It's just that I haven't had the chance to meet up with you. Besides," He added while untying the gift he had brought with him, "we're both schoolmates from Nami-chu. So I was thinking of celebrating this meeting with a few drinks!" He held up the unwrapped bottle of alcohol happily._

_Hibari glared at the table in front of him, glancing at the bottle before resuming his previous activity. _

"_I don't drink."_

_Ryohei immediately took offense. "What did you say? Idiot! I went through all the trouble of bringing good sake here!"_

_Here, Kusakabe deemed it worthy to interject. "No, it's not that. Kyo-san doesn't have a high tolerance for alcohol."_

_Ryohei now immediately smiled, mood swinging back up the scale. "Eh? Oh, I see! I guess you're still a kid then, Hibari!"_

_Hibari did not like being compared to a kid, of all things. "It's not that I can't drink," he said to the table, "It's just that I choose not to." He slid his gaze to Ryohei. "Do you not understand Japanese very well?"_

_Most of the conversation continued like that, even when discussing Tsuna's capability of determination to defeat the Millefiore._

_It ended with Kusakabe trying to stop Ryohei from yelling (and failing). Ryohei was just about to leave (without the bottle of alcohol, just in case Hibari decided to man up) when he paused and sat down again. Hibari held in annoyance by way that he understood that the man beside him was one of the few he tolerated._

"_Oh, Hibari. I met up with the Alice from ten years ago. She seems fine, normal, just like __she always was __until the day she left us."_

_Silence filled the air._

"_I don't know what you're trying to get to," Hibari said stiffly._

"_I'm just trying to see if you're okay, Hibari!" Ryohei grumbled. "I mean, it's _her _that we're talking about! I know if Hana died and I couldn't do anything about it, I would regret it for the rest of my life! Aren't you..."_

"_Stop, Sasagawa Ryohei." Hibari commanded. Ryohei stopped, and heard the light footsteps that Hibari had heard._

_Grey hair and yellow eyes peeked in. "Err, if this is a bad time, I'm sorry. I'll just place these tea leaves here..." She placed the tea leaves on the floor next to Kusakabe, who smiled at her and nodded, before slipping away again as fast as she had come._

_Ryohei smiled. _

"_It brings back memories, doesn't it? It still feels a bit strange, when I realise she's not here, or not our Alice."_

"_I believe you've already done what you came here to do, Sasagawa Ryohei," the cold voice answered, dismissing his question and him._

_Ryohei just smiled brightly, and stood up, looking at the box of tea leaves sitting innocently on the floor next to the ever vigilant Kusakabe. "But Hibari, don't you hate the Vongola base tea?" A glare answered him, and he knew not to continue asking questions and waved instead, disappearing back towards the door where the Vongola base was._

_Hibari was glad that silence had regained its peaceful reign over the room._

* * *

"Jared, where've you been?" I asked curiously, staring at the box in his arms and rotating the ball of flames on one of my chopsticks. He was on the other side of the computer screen again, having gone back to Italy on urgent business.

"Oh, just digging out some boxes. I found one that you gave me ages ago though, I'm curious if you know what they're for. I mean, It's just wasting my room space, even though I know you know that I have big rooms but still, I can use more –"

I sighed. "I get it already, show me what's inside."

He huffed, muttered something about impatient Alice-chwan and how he didn't get how a sensitive guy like him got along with such a dense girl like me.

Then he opened the box, and I widened my eyes.

It couldn't be.

Inside the box, was rows and rows of black journals – and from what I could see, nearly identical to the one I had left in the past and got from the future I-pin.

Apparently one from many copies.

Jared took a look at my face.

"Hey, Alice, you look weird."

"Who cares about that now," I said instead. "Read out the date on the very first page for the first seven please."

Jared grumbled, but complied.

"First journal – date, the seventh of the fifth. Second journal, the... seventh of the fifth of the exact same year? Third journal, seventh fifth. Fourth, seventh fifth. Fifth journal the same. Sixth journal, exactly the same. Seventh journal, also the same."

He looked up at me. "Why are you making so many copies of the same entry, Alice? You strange strange girl."

I stood up and walked away, going through the Foundation's base back to the Vongola base, ignoring Tsuna on the way and went straight back to my room.

What the heck was happening?

* * *

Four days left of training. Chrome had taken a turn for the worse, but during the commotion I slipped to the Foundation with a packet of tea, going to Kusakabe and giving the tracker with a note to Hibari about what it was.

Then I went straight to the kitchen, stole some food and a can opener, and went straight back to my room.

My thoughts were as jumbled as my room.

So I trained instead. Giving rise to another complication.

My Flames were incompatible with my guns.

Damn.

* * *

_Really... 'I'll leave everything to you, Sho-chan' indeed. Didn't she already say that that precious Sho-chan of his would betray him? But no, he didn't listen. _

_Sho-chan. Sho-chan. Sho-chan._

_Gragh, so annoying!_

_That fake Leonardo Lippi too._

"_Oh, Sho-chan recommended him, it's fine." Byakuran popped a marshmallow into his mouth, chewing slowly before swallowing, making her waste her precious time listening to him. "I already knew anyway."_

_Of course she knew that he knew! What he didn't know was the soon-to-be information leak!_

_Stupid ingrates. Stupid Vongola background antagonists._

_Flipping her hair and stalking past another few brainwashed followers, she started towards the exit, planning to go on her pre-booked flight to Japan._

_Really, she had to do everything herself._

"_Belle-chan."_

_She got annoyed again. What's with Byakuran's fixation on Japanese honorifics anyway? They were in Italy! Biting her tongue, she smiled._

"_Yes?"_

"_Sho-chan," there was that name again, she thought viciously, "said he didn't want reinforcements. So don't go to Japan, okay?" He held up her ticket. To Japan. Where she could fix everything and Byakuran just, just..._

_Ripped it._

_She couldn't murder the main character. She couldn't murder the main character. Not allowed, not allowed, not allowed, not allowed._

_She sniffed and whirled around on her high heels, stalking away and flicking her manicured nails at an ingrate to go unpack her luggage._

_STUPID Byakuran._

* * *

I refused summons to the meeting room, refusing to open the locked door saying it was 'training' (which it technically was).

When Ryohei came by for the meeting of the leaked information Mukuro had bought us, I just told Ryohei that I already knew, and he just did a noise of assent and walked away. It's not as if they needed me on scene anyway.

Sitting on my lumpy bed and staring at my guns, I tried to force the flames to merge with the weapon again, but it just slid off.

Why wasn't anything working out? I needed my long-range weapons! We were about to infiltrate the Millefiore base, for Heaven's sake! I hadn't technically bothered with volunteering myself to go on the actual infiltration with Ryohei, Tsuna, Yamamoto, Gokudera and Lal Mirch though.

Was that enough?

But thinking about it, I would be more useful to the latter ones, Chrome, Kusakabe, Lambo, I-pin and Hibari. Their infiltration at least was a bit quieter than the first group's. More suited to my way of attack.

A rumble in my stomach alerted me that I needed food again. Locating my can opener, I hunted for a still full can of food.

Shoot, I locked myself in my room for the past day or so. No more canned fruit to eat.

Stepping out of my room, I sleepily went around the base, looking for people and accidently barged into Kyoko and Tsuna facing each other, sitting formally on the floor surrounded by dropped clean clothing. I raised an eyebrow.

What... were they doing?

Kyoko said something, and Tsuna immediately started nervous laughing, scratching the back of his head with his face saying something totally different (i.e. – I should've acted cool!)

Haha, Tsuna was so cute.

"Hey, Kyoko, Tsuna." I yawned, and one of my chopsticks in my hair nearly fell on the floor. "How are you?"

"Alice-chan!" Kyoko immediately got up, "why didn't you come out of your room yesterday?"

I shrugged.

"Had a lot to catch up on and think about." Then I looked at the blushing Tsuna, who was staring at a little pocket on his jacket that hadn't been there before. Kyoko-chan's sparkles and charm had once again worked on the infamous Vongola Juudaime.

"Hey Tsuna. How is your training going?"

"Alice!" He looked at me, and immediately creased his forehead in worry. "You look horrible! Why are you still –"

I cut him off. "Tsuna, I'm not going to go on your infiltration with you. You don't need me. Something else has come up. I'll be more useful later."

"Huh? But Alice!"

This time, it was Reborn who suddenly appeared and stared silently at me.

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes. I'll be more useful later."

A pause, and Kyoko looking in confusion at our exchange before Reborn nodding. "Okay, I'll trust you. I'll go tell Lal then."

He disappeared, and I, still holding the chopsticks, dragged Kyoko forward as a human shield to block Tsuna's questions. Ha, I knew he wouldn't ask much with her around.

What an unconscious smart move.

"Hey, Tsuna," Yamamoto laughed, already eating a bowl of rice. Gokudera hadn't started yet, stopped midway from yelling at Yamamoto to wait for Juudaime to start the meal.

I just sighed, grabbed my meal off a tray (aah… fresh food was always the nicest – Kyoko and Haru's cooking was awesome) and headed towards Hibari's part of the base. I stepped in, to find only Hibari's main room had lights on.

Peering in, I was surprised to see Ryohei was also sitting there, with Hibari and Kusakabe, all sitting silently and drinking alcohol.

I was about to shuffle past (where was that huge room that Hibari fought off the Millefiore anyway) when the door slammed open, and I already had a shield of Flames ready (just in case tonfa came to bite me to death or something) when I stared into the professional eyes of Kusakabe. He blinked, before his face cleared up into a smile.

"Alice-san, do you care to join us?" He asked, settling down and out of the doorway so I could see another two pairs of eyes looking at me.

"Oh, Alice! You should extremely sit down with us!" Ryohei exclaimed, a bit quieter than when he was in the Vongola part of the base. He patted the space next to him, and I awkwardly sat down. When Ryohei offered alcohol (seriously?) I politely declined, and wondered at why Hibari was suddenly glaring at Ryohei like that.

"She is underage, Sasagawa Ryohei," Hibari said quietly into his own cup.

"Now, what does that matter? We were drinking buddies on her birthday!" Ryohei exclaimed, laughing.

I contemplated at this unexpected information.

Really?

I sipped my soup in silence, listening to the sounds of the night peacefully with Kusakabe quietly sitting behind us all, smiling secretly to himself.

That grin seemed a little smug, actually…

"Well, Hibari. I should be going now," Ryohei said, putting down his cup. "Good night. Take care, Hibari."

Then he did this smirk thing too, and left, Hibari eyeing the door that he left by.

Now it was just us two.

Awkward.

I continued sipping soup. He continued sipping whatever he was drinking (since I think he doesn't drink alcohol), and slowly it went from awkward to peaceful. It was actually kind of relaxing to sit in a large room like this sipping soup with Hibari when he wasn't bloodthirsty.

I was enjoying the quiet, when something stumbled into the room, disturbing the quiet.

Uri?

The cat stumbled towards me, then fell into my lap and started purring. I stared at it, before plucking it from the scruff of its neck and holding it eye level. It was purring quite loudly when it stared and me and smiled in a… cat way?

"I'm sure this was Gokudera's," I said to myself, not having seen it in real life before except for a glimpse when I got to dinner.

I stared at it. It purred back. Then someone took it from my hand and stepped out the door.

"Kyo-san, you don't need to," Kusakabe started, getting up on his feet to presumably deliver Uri back to the Vongola himself. Hibari just shook his head and continued holding the cat at arm's length and walking towards the Vongola base.

I looked at Kusakabe, who looked lost at Hibari's refusal.

"Can I stay here, Kusakabe? I'm going to wait for the attack on the tracker I gave Hibari."

"Of course, I'll arrange a futon and a blanket."

Though not liking futons one bit, I nodded, and just dumped the futon and blanket in the corner of the room, waiting for the sun to rise, fingering my guns and wondering why they didn't match with the Flames.

* * *

During that night, I contacted Jared for a midnight lesson (I couldn't sleep) on what other properties my Flame had.

My Flame, apparently, could not only make things invisible if I wanted to, but also block signals from a particular area that I had entrapped. Like, if I made a sphere of Flames, then anyone inside wouldn't be able to use a radio transmitter, or mobile phone to contact anybody outside. Of course, they could still shout so it's useless for major battles, only for ambushing.

But that also meant that signals couldn't get in either. So if there was a camera, and I put something inside a layer of Flames, I could either make it invisible, or make it blank out signals. Making it invisible meant the cameras couldn't catch me visible (unless it was thermal). Blocking signals meant that there would be this huge blank space on the camera which hid my identity but signalled I was there (but was effective against thermal).

Jared said that I wasn't skilled enough to balance the two abilities out yet and use them at the same time, but knowing there was something else to my ability gave me more ideas how to use it.

Apparently, there was also another way to use the Flames, but dawn came way too fast, and I had to cut Jared off when Kusakabe called me and told me it 'was time'.

I nodded and got up, already in a comfy dark grey wool jumper and black pants when I came here. Checking my other gear, my two guns, my two pairs of chopsticks, and my two boxes that Jared had forbidden me from opening yet, I nodded at Kusakabe and followed him to where Hibari was.

Surprisingly, he was on the surface, in a suit and sitting leisurely behind a fence and watching the Millefiore dig holes in an empty lot. I had already covered myself with Flames, but he noticed the grass bending under my feet and simply nodded before smirking when he saw all the Millefiore jumping into the holes at once, waiting for them all to jump in before he himself vaulted over the fence.

There was an unsaid understanding that I do the same, so even though I hadn't done athletics for a long time I followed suit, and jumped with no hesitation into the hole that Hibari had jumped into.

I landed on cloud propagated bars, and I balanced on them next to Hibari, who stepped out from the shadows.

"It seems I caught you," he said as if commenting on a particularly lazy day, walking on the bars towards me before stopping right in the middle and dropping the tracker through the bars and down, down towards the shocked Millefiore people who watched in disbelieving silence.

I knew it was about my cue to start spreading my Flames. A dull flicker shimmered over my ring, before spreading out and into the dirt around, with me ordering the Flame to enclose the whole room with its ability to block signals. Jared must have told me about this last night for a reason.

"That is Glo Xinia-dono's transmitter." They muttered amongst themselves, and I was glad that they hadn't started contacting Shouichi yet because I was only half-way done enclosing the room. Three-quarters now, buy more time…

Flames kept pouring out of my ring as Hibari gave a tiny smirk, only one unreadable glance at all the Flame that was coming out of my ring.

"Only the weak flock together in packs. I'll bite you all to death, like cornered rats." Hibari continued talking, and I could feel the Flames nearly joining together. Two Rolls had come out of their boxes, porcupines floating a bit behind their master, who had lit his tonfa in a brilliant purple.

Finished. I wiped sweat off my forehead just in time, and smirked at them, just a second too late when they yelled into their helmets,

"It's a trap!"

* * *

"_What on earth is happening?" Yamamoto asked as he, Tsuna and Gokudera rand through the corridors. He felt the reassurance of Shigure Kintoki on his back, and stared forward over Tsuna's head._

"_This alarm is the real thing," Gokudera said in response, running behind his Juudaime who he saw was slightly panicking._

"_It came so suddenly, way faster than we planned," Tsuna exclaimed, beads of sweat slowly trickling down his face in nervousness. A familiar squeaky voice came from his head-phones._

"_This was the enemy's plan," Reborn said, short and to the point._

"_The reason is," Giannini tried to explain as fast as possible, "the Millefiore had all their squads leave their base to attack us," he said, nearly stumbling over his words. _

"_Also, Hibari is already on the scene with Alice." Reborn added to Giannini's explanation._

"_Hibari-san and Alice? There is a lot of the enemy, right? They can't beat them all by himself!" Tsuna yelled, worrying instincts taking over his thoughts. "We have to go too!"_

_Ryohei pulled up beside them. "No need!" He shouted. Tsuna gave a surprised glance to him, and Ryohei gave him a serious glance. "Hibari can handle all of them by himself. Alice is there only for support and look-out in case something goes wrong. Hibari is strong enough!"_

"_That is just…" Tsuna softly muttered, with his worries only worsened when Reborn told him how the Millefiore's soldiers were strong, but not enough to beat Hibari._

_It didn't soothe his worries._

_Reborn stared at the screen that had a basic diagram of how the battle went for Hibari._

* * *

I was the only one outside my flame barrier, so I was the one sending messages over on how the battle was going, sitting cross-legged with a small laptop on my lap that Kusakabe had shoved onto me before, tapping madly away at the keyboard on how the battle was going. The connection with Giannini's computer was strong, thank goodness.

Hibari was down there, cutting down people, and updating at the bottom of a dark damp tunnel sitting on warm metal bars was a strange experience. Here, I couldn't feel the desperation that Tsuna somehow exuded nowadays, always preoccupied of how he needed to bring us all back to the past.

Funnily enough, it was only when I was sitting directly over a battle that I could forget about everyone's fear.

So funny.

I laughed, while still tapping out updates on the situation. The family's strength _was_ Tsuna's caring nature. He really did pull us all together, if even I felt his feelings from just being around him.

I silently wished him luck, amidst the screams of pain and panicked instructions, the damp air of the morning without the light, and the cold glow from the computer screen.

_Good luck, Tsuna._

A man in the corner was trying to contact Headquarters, yelling into his helmet trying to get a connection and failing. This time, I was the one smirking at a job well done and hoped this wouldn't get onto my crimes and prevent me from going to Heaven.

'_Another two down, forty-seven to go', _I typed into the computer which I sent.

Another pained scream, and I had to update yet again.

This was going to be a long fight.

* * *

"_Tsuna and everyone… they left already, right?" Haru said softly while staring at the peaceful faces of I-pin and Lambo sleeping._

_Kyoko looked down smiling. "They didn't tell anyone."_

_Haru looked at her. "They didn't even get to eat breakfast."_

"_Yeah," Kyoko replied, smile dropping. Even nii-chan left without saying anything suspicious about the 'sumo contest'. Why didn't he tell her they were leaving?_

"_Kyoko-chan," Haru said with a smile, "let's stay calm and cook food for the others. Even if it's still early, we can have an early start." She smiled at her, knowing they both were the type that needed something to do if they had to get their mind off things. Cooking was one of the only things they could do, so therefore it was one of their escapes._

_After all, they still didn't know what was happening, and so they couldn't support the others in any other way. They had debated on whether they __should__ ask Alice, or even Reborn, but they knew they would just brush it off. Not tell them anything._

_And all they could do was wait._

_Wait until they were willing to tell them something._

"_We should," Kyoko smiled up at Haru._

_Why did they feel so old?_

* * *

**Is this late? Yes! But is this longish? Yes! Did it get to the infiltration arc? MUAHAHAHA, YES!**

**I love you reviewers. You literally did a mental butt-kick and I knew that, -sigh, I had to write- and so I served this chapter. It was interesting to write, and I'm just really happy. Please keep reviewing, next chapter is really going to be infiltration infiltration. Ohoho, plot twists…**

**Thanks go to – my sister, my reviewers, my readers, and my inspiration. Thank you all!**

**And people who think Hibari-Alice is certain… THINK AGAIN. Something's going to come up a bit later that will make Tsuna-Alice supporters a happy whirl. Because, well, I DID focus on Tsuna for the first 20 chapters or so, I have to give Hibari some sort of chance. There needs to be development to be a fair contest! And oh, I closed the poll. There is a majority O_o but not going to say because I'm mean like that. (the number system? I'll explain it a bit later – I'll remember it now, so thank you Akuma no Tenshi 666)**

**HOLIDAYS! YOU ARE THE BEST! I WILL NOW STUFF MY FACE WITH LOLLIES AND DRINK SOY MILK! (See you all next week! XD)**


	33. There they go, infiltrating

So it was decided. I was going to infiltrate the Millefiore base alone.

I pulled on another jumper, as the old one had specks of blood on it after following Hibari's gradual drift from the prepared ambush room to the subways. Hibari had no need to hide how he knew where the rest of the hidden Millefiore troops were. He knew I knew. I knew he knew. There was a mutual understanding.

Tugging the sleeves over my hands and grabbing a black cap from the hat collection, I hurried out of my room, checking the copies of the requested paper blueprints of the Mellone Base specially printed for me.

I didn't trust those fiddly computer things that they wanted to provide me with. What if someone attacked me, and broke the screen or something? I would have lost my vague advantage, as it was clear I was going to go in near the time Shouichi started moving the blocks. Of course I didn't know exactly which blocks would move and how, but there were a limited amount of blocks that could move, so it was all to predicting and luck.

Which blocks move? Could move? May move after another block moved?

There were about ten minutes until I had to reach the entrance Hibari had indicated to me hidden in the subways. We had gone back and Reborn had told me, not Hibari or the others, but _me_, that I was going to be the next line. He hadn't gotten into contact with Tsuna yet, which means Tsuna hadn't gotten captured by Spanner.

Yet. My estimation by the time of day indicated one thing.

Tsuna would meet Spanner very soon.

I groaned, tilting my cap backwards like how I saw those backyard delinquents did, letting my hair down and putting both pairs of my chopsticks next to my left gun. I had one question when Reborn asked me to go _alone_ of all things I could do.

Reborn only looked back at me with unreadable eyes.

"You're the only one capable of ensuring the second group's success in infiltrating the base. They can't use the path Tsuna and the others took. You realise that," he paused around then, talking even softer than he already had. "Giannini, Bianchi and Fuuta don't know, but the other's minds are easy to read."

He smirked. I wanted to bang my head on a wall. "You'll be the advance guard for the second group. Make sure to lead them to the right places."

And then he let me go, and I frowned at the watch Giannini had given me instead of that screen thing I had refused. It would let me communicate with the others, as it connected to the earphones I had also been supplied with. Putting it on in one ear, I didn't bother to check it and jumped down the huge holes into the ambush room.

Stepping delicately over bodies and corpses, I used the huge ball of leftover Flame from when I was blocking Millefiore signals and just dumped half of it over myself, the other half in a ball above my head, shimmering grey light over the area.

The door I was trying to reach was past an unused subway, through a worker's tunnel to an _active_ subway. Japanese subways had their trains come pretty fast. I had approximately forty seconds to go from the worker's tunnel to another one thirty metres down, where presumably (from where Hibari's vague hand sweep) indicated a door to the enemy Base.

I crouched, holding firmly to a crack in the concrete wall and waited as close to the entrance to the tracks as I dared. The air pressure before the train might pull me onto the track if I wasn't careful.

When the warning rumble and train lights came from the tracks, I ordered the ball of flame behind me so that my body would hide the light from the train driver. Wouldn't want to frighten the poor person.

The train came with a swoosh, and I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. A few seconds later, the train was gone. I went to get up, but then realised I had already wasted six seconds just by getting up and walking out of the tunnel. There wouldn't be enough time to guarantee safety.

I settled back into the tunnel, deeper this time, and waiting for the next train to come. This time, I didn't close my eyes.

The train came, and I pressed the 'start' button on my stopwatch. When the train left, I marked the time.

Four seconds.

The stopwatch continued counting, and I waited yet again, feeling a bit light headed from adrenaline.

Damn this subway line being too busy to close without being suspicious. Why did Shouichi build an entrance here anyway? At least make it easier for us to get into the base! You would think being secret allies would help but nooo...

There were probably other entrances into the Mellone Base, but this was the closest one that didn't need to go onto the surface. Tsuna and the others got the safe path. As I waited in stale air and wiped my grimy fingers on my jumper in the dim lighting, I suddenly regretted not going with them. At least with them, all I had to do was hide behind Tsuna or something and watch...

The trains came every forty seconds. When my stop-watch reached forty-four, the train came right on time, and I inched forward slowly, eyes on watch, flame ball trailing behind.

Forty-eight!

I ran forward, even as the tail end of the train half blocked the tunnel entrance. Clearing it, and turning a sharp right, I ordered the flame ball forward to light the way. After running for what seemed way more than forty seconds, the light revealed a tunnel entrance which I nearly ran past.

Diving into it, I rolled into a stop when, as I was calming my breathing down, the train came.

Damn, was I so out of shape? But still, I thought as I got up and looked around, this tunnel definitely was suspicious.

What type of tunnel had a fake floor, and underneath, a shiny, high tech, glowing _white_ door?

Really... I raised an eyebrow, but let it go. Just made my job easier.

Making sure the flame around me was making me still invisible (had it been five hours since I started using these flames?) I used the other one to spread over the door, using the 'no signal' use of it. I felt the locks, a simple hand-print reader and a retinal scanner.

I tested my theory.

Worming the flame into the device, I ordered the flame to cover all the pieces in it, completely.

Both of them cut connection at the same time. It just switched off.

Now the tense bit. Would Irie Shouichi detect this? I drew out my guns, making sure I was still completely invisible and ordered the flame to burn through the wires, now they weren't active (they were still flames, after all).

I half knelt there, waiting for Millefiore and knowing time only by the number of trains that passed me. Two trains. The rumble and a flash of light. Three trains.

Should I wait a bit longer? I held my breath longer than I thought I could.

The fourth train.

I decided no-one was going to pop out and fry me with storm flames.

Breathing as slowly as I could to try and get rid of the adrenaline rush, I ordered the ball of flames now to go to the lock and burn it through slowly, disabling any alert systems first.

There were two alerts systems, and then the lock. Rearranging my cap again to pull hair back from my face, I pulled up the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

Stairs. After searching them first with flames, I stepped down as quietly as I could, to enter into a Millefiore corridor.

Good. That was all I needed to know.

Going back up and closing the door again, I covered the door again with the fake floor and moved backwards, using the flame to light up a bit more, letting me look at the blueprints and scribble where I thought blocks would go hastily. Then I contacted headquarters.

"Reborn, do you read me?" I said into my watch, waiting for a reply. It crackled a bit, but Reborn gave a clear reply.

"YES, WHERE ARE YOU?" Reborn's voice boomed into my ear. I winced. Oww...

I ripped it off and searched for the volume button, turning it down (why was it on one hundred? Damn Giannini) before replying.

"In front of the door, successfully bypassed the security."

"Good. Kusakabe is still sneaking Chrome from the room, so you have some time. Go down and see the situation down there, before going back up within twenty minutes. What, Giannini."

Giannini's voice came from the background.

"What are you murmuring about there, Reborn-san? Anyway, we have a strong signal from the Vongola Juudaime!"

A train whooshed by, and I missed Reborn's next words, but a strong signal?

Tsuna only had a good signal is Spanner's workroom, and everyone else was... Think, Alice, think! The base was going to move soon, I had to know at least where everyone else was. I stared at the blueprint.

They were separated. Yamamoto with Lal. Gokudera with Ryohei. Yamamoto bumps into two boomerang people, then Nosaru before getting separated from him and bumping into Genkishi. Ryohei and Gokudera got it simpler, getting Gamma and then fighting to a draw.

Genkishi... Yamamoto lost didn't he? Then Hibari had to come at exactly the right time from the left wall, and then engaging him in combat and saving Yamamoto's life.

Not too early, not too late. Why did authors always have to have their cool characters coming at the perfect time? It was a headache, really...

"Hibari found another group of Millefiore in an abandoned subway near your line," Reborn said into my ear, as clear as if he was sitting on my shoulder. "Chrome and Kusakabe with Lambo and I-pin and heading your way. Hibari will join them later, and they will wait for you to lead them into the base. Remember to come back in twenty minutes, they should be there. I have to talk to Tsuna now."

And he cut off, and I sighed and opened the door again.

Evaluate the situation underneath, huh?

I sighed again. That's what happens when you don't stick with the main character.

I walked down the stairs.

* * *

"_What?" Belle shrieked at Bill, who had to cover his ears with his hands._

"_That's what I said, you numbskull, quiet down a bit. As you can see, you're in a library." He waved his arm around, to the shelves of books surrounding the oasis of couches and fireplace. Belle had no patience for _that.

"_You say that, after seven hundred something years of trying to get the plot of my story good enough for me to go to Heaven, you say that there's a plot clash?"_

"_Yes," Bill said as patiently as he could. Even angelic beings had tolerance issues. Like, look at the Angel of Love! She went on mood swings all the time. Kind of like this crazy lady. She was ranting, and Bill forced himself to listen to her shrieking._

"_What will happen?"_

"_It's time travel. That's why I hate time travel you know. You're number fifty in the world, that's the limit right? You fit into the spot that Alice left when she went to Heaven. Now she's time travelled up to the future, there's an imbalance. I can't shove more than fifty people in a world you know. It creates too much change."_

"_So what? I can still continue right? I mean, the plot's absolute."_

"_Not this time. Byakuran wins in your one, right?"_

_Belle tried to stop herself from huffing. No matter how scruffy and how much he looked like a hobo he was an Angel. Yes, he was an angel. Don't blow up at the Angel. Good Belle. She knew she could do it._

"_Yes?" She said sweetly, plump lips curving into a cute smile (albeit a bit forcedly, but who cares about the details?)_

"_Well, Byakuran dies in the plot you're clashing against."_

"_WHAT?" Bill sighed. Here came the shrieking again. "So what's going to happen?"_

"_Usually, there would be no problem. I would just move one of you into an alternate universe. But that can't happen now."_

"_Why not?" Belle huffed. _

_She had given up on the battle. It was too hard to suppress her bitchy side._

"_There are fifty-one of you. The world's too unstable for me to even try taking a person out. You'll have to wait it out. And that means your plots clashing." Bill sighed. "It depends on luck now and ability, because one of your plots has to win to correct the instability."_

_Bill sighed yet again. "Why is it such a pain? Normally the world would just split, now it can't. And because it's so unstable the plot can change. So anything can happen now."_

_Belle sniffed._

"_Whatever. I'll win anyway. I have loads more experience than her."_

"_You're just old."_

_Belle gave the most chilling glare she could give. "Shut up. You're older than me."_

_Bill shrugged and harrumphed. She tried not to be offended by such a rude action in her presence. "I'm not the one who cares."_

_She wanted to shriek again, just to annoy him. Bill tried to get rid of an impending headache._

* * *

Walking invisibly was hard, trying to focus getting the invisibility perfectly right and dodging Millefiore running in the halls, questioning why the rooms had been shifted was even harder.

I widened my eyes. Wait... Shouichi had already started moving the blocks?

My hand automatically went to the blueprints in my pockets, I realised it was pointless if they were invisible. Stupid Alice. I really was nervous, wasn't I?

Snooping around, I tried to tread as quietly as I could, listening to conversations on the way.

"I wish I was sent on the assault team!" A white uniformed mousy faced person whined to another mousy faced colleague. Useless. I moved on.

"I hear Ginger Bread got beaten!" A young black uniformed boy exclaimed to someone older, and the older one hushed him and gave him a hair ruffle. I noted that and moved on.

"We're not allowed on the twelfth floor because apparently there was an intruder fighting with Nosaru..." Another black uniformed person whispered to a nurse. I perked up my ears. The twelfth floor?

"Oh, thank you for telling me," the nurse replied flirtatiously. I wanted to laugh at their pitiful advances at each other. They could use lessons from Kyoko, who could unconsciously flirt with everyone with her 'sparkly aura' (that's what I called it anyway... those fanboys seem to flock to her whenever she had that turned on).

Someone ran down the corridor and I had to nearly dive to the side so that he didn't crash into me. My cheek was squished into the wall, and I found the mould that Gokudera had pointed out in the wall cracks. I grimaced.

Lovely.

The guy that made me lunge for the wall flung open a door and yelled into it.

"We need more technical staff to decode the Gola Mosca's video recordings to locate where the Vongola Tenth fell into the canal! Are there any good decoders in here?"

There was a shuffle, and he with another three people headed for the elevator and went down to the eighth floor. So Yamamoto was on the twelfth, and Tsuna was on the eighth before being moved to Spanner's workroom in dock four. Okay, got that. Remaining was Gokudera and Ryohei.

I checked my watch, and started rushing back to the subway. Fifteen minutes! I wonder if Chrome managed the run to the entrance. She would be so weak after a coma...

Well, she has Kusakabe the pompadour man with her. She'll be okay.

Swerving around two medical carts, I finally found the information I wanted.

"Training room five is out of bounds for now because Captain Gamma is fighting in there, but we must be ready to treat casualties so be prepared," an older nurse a younger nurse curtly, and the younger one nodded rapidly before asking meekly,

"Where is training room five?"

"Level ten. Remember that for next time, newcomer."

"Yes!"

Thanking them both silently, I went back to the stairs, running up them two at a time and came up just in time. They were all there, Hibari, Kusakabe, Chrome, with I-pin and Lambo in Kusakabe's backpack peeking out.

"Alice-san, are you okay?" Kusakabe asked me with a smile. I-pin jumped out and landed on my head before giving a hug. Lambo jumped and started 'Gwahahaha'-ing. I smiled back, and closed the door quickly so Lambo's laugh wouldn't echo down and make the Millefiore suspicious.

"Lambo, quiet down." He stopped laughing immediately and hid behind Kusakabe. I raised an eyebrow, before shrugging and taking out the blueprints.

"What are these, Alice-san?" Chrome asked me, gripping her trident tightly in shaking hands. I looked at her in concern, but she shook her head and I spread the blueprints out instead. Then I started pointing.

"We're here to try and find and back-up the first group. From what I gathered, Tsuna was on the seventh floor where there was a water canal," I pointed to the level, "but he was taken in by an ally and he doesn't need help right now. Our focus is here."

I directed my finger to level ten. "Gokudera and Ryohei are here fighting Gamma the Electric." I nodded at Hibari. "The one that you fought against."

He smirked, but at what I didn't know. I shrugged and continued. A train rushed by, so I paused before continuing.

"Yamamoto is with Lal Mirch, and they're around here..." I waved my finger around the twelfth floor, "I'm not sure where, but he's around here."

I stopped, and Kusakabe nodded. "Thank you, Alice-san. That was very important information. What are these lines?"

"Oh, those." I scratched my cheek, only to grimace when I saw how dirty my fingers were. "Just my predictions on how the blocks will move. Don't worry."

When Kusakabe went to ask more questions, I shushed him. "It's important we get to the first group as fast as possible. Chrome, we need your power. I can cover you all with flames, but it would be good to show there is an illusionist with us. It would make them raise their defence, and less people would go to the battle areas we're aiming for."

"Yes," Chrome nodded with determination in her eyes. "I will do my best."

I smiled at her, before going to Kusakabe. "Accompany Chrome always. Be ready to support her. With an illusionist with you, you can extract information easier. Pinpoint where Gokudera and Ryohei are and get to them as quickly as possible undetected."

"Yes, Alice-san."

"Hibari, I won't give you directions. That'll be pointless, but please cooperate."

"Hn."

I clapped my hands. "Chrome, please use your illusions to cover yourself, Kusakabe and Hibari."

"Wh-what about you, Alice-san?" Chrome asked me softly, eyebrows furrowed.

"Remember my flames?"

She shook her head, and I remembered _of course she didn't know, she was in a coma... and most of the others didn't know anyway _– I wondered what was happening to me lately, my mind was drifting a bit...

My flames had waned, so I just resupplied it. I showed it to her, the gentle grey glow and covered myself with it, and when it had completely covered me, I ordered it to make me invisible. Chrome gasped in understanding, and nodded.

"Kusakabe-san pointed out a few faces I could use as a team coming back from the ambush," Chrome said quietly and I nodded. Then realised they couldn't see me (Lambo was talking abnormally loudly about WA, SCARY-EYES JUST TURNED INVISIBLE!) and cleared my throat instead.

"Okay. Let's go. There will be a corridor, and there's a camera stationed at the bottom of the stairs. Do your illusion now, Chrome, and you all go before me. Lambo, be quiet until you're needed."

She did as she was told, Lambo zipped his mouth shut as well, I-pin jumped in the backpack and closed it and the three seemingly old men walked down the stairs, with me invisibly following them.

Second group infiltration – complete.

* * *

_Yamamoto couldn't hear anything. He couldn't see anything either, and although he couldn't feel any pain other from his head, he couldn't move his arms or legs. He knew that Mist swordsman was there, ready to kill him, but why couldn't he move?_

_He wanted to laugh. Tsuna and the others had been depending on him. He knew Tsuna was bearing all their stress on his shoulders. Could see how he tried to soothe everyone's worries without worry to himself._

_That was what made him admirable, to Yamamoto's eyes. He had first talked to Tsuna on a whim, with his logic that as he had already made so many miracles, he could make one for his dropping baseball form, right? But then he had broken his arm and jumped from the roof._

_He didn't whether to think of that day as fortunate or a day to be forgotten. He had truly met Tsuna that day, no matter what everyone else named him as. _

_Tsuna had given him another reason to live. He had become one of his reasons to live, and soon brought in many other reasons. Tsuna was his hero, in a sense, but in a closer sense since heroes are people who you look from afar, but for Yamamoto Tsuna was a person who was the best type of friend a person could ask for. He had also introduced many other interesting friends, all giving another perspective of life, and making Yamamoto wonder why he had contemplated suiciding when there was so much to see, and experience._

_But Tsuna had also introduced the mafia._

_He didn't really mind. That was, until he realised that his dad, his old man had been killed. And even then, he didn't blame Tsuna, for it was his decision to follow him. He blamed himself for not saving him._

_So right then, he set the conviction that he would become stronger. Become stronger, and then fight with Tsuna to change their future. There were so many things in the future he didn't like. He didn't want his old man to die. He didn't want Alice to die. He didn't want Tsuna to die._

_So if he wanted to protect these people, he had to put in his effort. He was going to play his part. _

_He could not lie down defeated._

_His eyes were closing on their own, and he saw the Shigure Kintoki blurrily. He tried to reach for it, but his arm wouldn't reach._

_He could not lie down defeated._

_He fought to not close his eyes, ordered his legs to move, get him up, fight the swordsman again._

_He could not lie down defeated._

_Black started curling through his vision, his breath felt short._

_He could not lie down defeated._

_Yamamoto lost consciousness._

* * *

"_I... lack conviction?" Gokudera repeated what Gamma had said. How dare he, how dare he say that he had no conviction?_

_How dare he say that Juudaime wasn't as good as he thought?_

_Gokudera was the right-hand man of the Vongola tenth, and would stay that way. He was proud to say he knew the Juudaime so well he could detect slight differences in his mood (no, he was not a stalker, only a very dedicated follower)._

_Juudaime had taught him the value of life. But not anyone's life, but his own life. _

_He was the first to say that he cared for his own insignificant life. He was practically a complete stranger, they hadn't known each other for a long time at all. About a year, that was when the Varia attacked._

_When he shouted he would rather die than lose, the Vongola Tenth's words shook him to the core._

"_Quit joking!" Juudaime had shouted. He had never really shouted before, never angrily. He had never, never _ever_ heard his Juudaime become really angry. But now he did. Because of him? "What do you think we're fighting for?" He continued._

_Gokudera's eyes widened, although one was swollen and another was bruised. He was fighting for Juudaime, of course. He couldn't lose. But Juudaime's words continued._

"_To have snowball fights, to watch fireworks with everyone, that's why we fight! That's why we become stronger! We become stronger to laugh together with everyone!_

"_If you died, wouldn't it all be in vain?"_

_If you died, wouldn't it all be in vain? Juudaime's words had echoed in Gokudera's brain. He understood. He finally understood what Shamal, what Juudaime had been trying to say._

_He was a foreigner that came to Japan to kill him. They had known each other less than a year, but he had noticed that sometimes his actions sparked irritation in his Boss. He had been Boss in name at the start, before he started to see the deeper side of Juudaime. That kind heart that led him to save his own assassin._

_If it was for Juudaime... he would do anything._

"_I have to get Juudaime back into the past!" Gokudera yelled at Gamma. "I won't lose here!"_

* * *

"Go straight forward, and go left and there should be a corridor with guards," I whispered to the three in front of me, hoping I was correct.

Chrome nodded and followed my instructions. And there they were, the two guards standing aimlessly in front of a corridor to the elevator of all things. Then she started the act first, when they saw the two guards.

"Excuse me; can you give us a hand?"

The two people looked at Chrome and widened their eyes. "That's..."

"It's me," Chrome said, reinforcing their impression that it really was Captain Nicola they were talking to. I tried not to be bothered about that deep booming voice coming from a small girl like Chrome.

It just didn't fit, you know?

"Captain Nicola!" one exclaimed, recognising the illusion Chrome had made. It really was well done, and she was lip-syncing really well.

"Have you been injured?" The other guard asked. I nearly sighed (nearly – I caught myself before I actually did so, thank goodness). What was with people and stating the obvious? One of the illusions had a broken arm, for Heaven's sake...

"Yes, as you can see," Chrome continued the act, walking towards them all the while. "But, the fall of the Vongola base is only a matter of time."

"Is that so?" The first one smiled in relief, before frowning. "But why come here?"

"Obeying Irie-sama's orders, I'm to recover at the infirmary, but the map at the computer terminal seems completely useless." Chrome then looked up at them. "What happened?"

As they were explaining about Shouichi and how he could move the blocks, and the new map needed a finger vein authentication, I sneaked around Chrome and behind the two guards.

"Finger vein authentication? That's inconvenient."

Then she stabbed the first guard, and before the other could say much, I knocked his head hard with my gun. I hope he didn't get brain damage... The mist illusion Chrome had made was slowly fading away. "Sorry," she apologised to the person she knocked out. I grinned, letting the invisibility fade a bit.

"I think the elevators should be down the corridor, according to predictions. But I might be wrong, so please be careful. The elevator shafts are the only things that shouldn't move in this base so when you get on the floor, even where the elevator is didn't change, what is surrounding them might've."

"Thank you, Alice-san." Kusakabe said from Chrome's left, his pompadour starting to peek out of the mist flames.

I didn't really expect a reply from Hibari, but when I turned to where he had been, he was gone.

Oh no, don't tell me...

"I'll leave now. Remember, the tenth floor. Chrome, you're doing great." I grinned at her, knowing that she needed at least some encouragement once in a while that wasn't from Mukuro, and dashed off where I thought Hibari would have gone.

I managed to dive into the elevator before it fully closed.

Hibari was staring down at where I should be with an eyebrow raised (I was still invisible, but that didn't stop Hibari from making a condescending face), and I only stood up slowly and looked in the mirror the elevator had to see if I was still completely invisible.

"Err, Hibari," I said, trying to break the awkward silence (to me), "I'll be going with you to the... twelfth floor?"

Ha, he had already pin-pointed the area with the least people. And he didn't even know.

Was it unconscious instinct or something?

Thinking Hibari as an alien with an antennae to detect how many people in the vicinity made me want to chuckle. ...Or shudder. That was disturbing.

The elevator reached the twelfth floor, and I covered Hibari with Flames as well. Because in the anime, somehow Hibari bulldozes through rooms and still wasn't found out. There had to be a reason right?

I sighed as I could hear an invisible disapproving Hibari sniff.

I hate plot holes.

* * *

"_Time... travel?" Tsuna repeated Spanner's words. Irie Shouichi had been researching... time travel?_

_Tsuna nearly didn't believe his ears. The thing that they had been waiting for was just there, in the base. He was near the thing that could take them away from the future! _

_He was so glad. He was so, so glad. He was the one who dragged all his friends into this mess. They didn't belong here, didn't need to know that there had been such a bleak future in front of their lives if they continued dealing with mafia. After realising he wasn't the only one who was struggling to cope with this future, his stress had worsened._

_He started noticing every little thing. The shadows that grew under Kyoko's eyes. Yamamoto's silent moments, his face contemplating in the rare times he forgot to smile. Gokudera getting moodier as time went on, more and more desperate to get his training finished. Chrome in the hospital bed struggling to breathe because she had been shot into the future. Finding out with shock that Haru had been crying in secret in every day. Lambo crying for his mom, wanting a warm hug from the person he loved most. I-pin hugging the doll that Ryohei had given her with a stubbornness that wasn't at all normal._

_And all of it was his fault._

_He had, of course, been able to push most of the guilt away in the day, but at night the worries would never leave. Sometimes, he had even thought that maybe there was no way to leave this era, maybe they had to stay ten-years in the future forever. _

_He wasn't strong enough to push the thought away._

_Knowing the future was, was just... horrible. He had died, there was a massacre on the Vongola, his mother and father were missing, Reborn not being able to move freely because of some weird radiation, Yamamoto's father killed and knowing Alice had already died, years before._

_There was some ridiculousness whenever he thought of Alice. He felt dread, knowing she would die before the others, that maybe he wouldn't be able to stop it. But there was also reassurance, because Alice was the only one who didn't show any signs of stress at all. She was normal, the normal poker-faced, dead-pan, blunt Alice he knew. There wasn't any change._

_It was as if she had absolute trust in Tsuna to make stuff right. It was reassuring, but also gave so much more stress. _

_It was his job, the Boss's job, to get his friends back to the past where they belonged, whether the future was this or not. At least they had some warning right? (But there was that question again... maybe they were stuck here forever, ever and always...)_

_And with this... Tsuna smiled. _

_He had a direction._

_Now he could save his friends. _

_Now he could make them all smile brightly again._

* * *

**Christmas special!**

**All the characters were all asked one question: What would they like for Christmas/ideal gift/ideal Christmas?**

Reborn smirks slightly at _the question_, before casually (or in his eyes, coolly) crossing his legs and stroking Leon – non-threateningly of course – in a lazy manner. "Why," he says squeakily with... was that an evil gleam in his eye? But nonetheless, he answers the question. "Why, I want Tsuna to get one hundreds in all of his tests. It is the wish of any hard-working home-tutor." His smirk gleams. "If he doesn't, that just means I wasn't harsh enough, no?" He asks innocently.

There is a squeak from the hallway that sounds suspiciously like a mouse choking to death, and fluffy brown hair darts away from the doorway.

Tsuna tries to catch his breath from his dash in the hallway as he blinks innocently at _the question_. "Christmas present?" He repeats. At a nod of confirmation, he goes into apparent deep thought. "Maybe... going to a festival if everybody!" He says brightly, "Then maybe Kyoko-chan and I could go and have a goldfish catching contest together with Alice looking on and Gokudera arguing with Yamamoto and," he continues to answer even as he starts to wilt a bit around here, "nii-san goes to the strength tests and Lambo might get into trouble again and drag I-pin with him, and then Hibari would come because the discipline's disturbed..."

Tsuna pauses, before concluding. "Maybe if Kyoko-chan and I could go **alone** to a festival together!" Then he seems distracted yet again. "But then, Gokudera and Alice always know where I am..."

And, sensing that the poor boy was having difficulty answering the question, he was giving a lollipop in compensation and the question went to the next person.

Gokudera was muttering to himself outside Tsuna's house, holding a bag and questioning if he should barge into 'Juudaime's' house so early in the morning. Instead of asking why he was hunched over and looking like a stalker, he was asked _the question. _ He had no hesitation. With fire in his eyes, he abandoned his hunched position and raved passionately. "I, of course, ever and always will strive to be the perfect right-hand man for Juudaime!" Then he paused. "And, oh, the latest instalment of the supernatural encounters magazine." He was prevented from continuing when there was a surprised shout from an upstairs bedroom.

"Gokudera?" Tsuna shouted/squeaked. Gokudera widened his eyes. Did he disturb his Juudaime's sleep?

"I'm so sorry, Juudaime!" He immediately started bowing and apologising profusely. Tsuna could only look on in confusion. Or exasperation. A viewer could choose both.

Walking down the street was Nana, coming home from some very early shopping as she had forgotten some groceries for her Christmas feast. She was, of course, asked _the question._ She blinked, much reminiscent of dear Tsunayoshi, before smiling brightly. "I want to Iemitsu to come home and enjoy the Christmas feast with the whole family, and maybe later we could watch the sunset together, romantically out on the veranda." She sighs in happiness, nearly dropping her groceries and exuding heart waves. She snaps out of it however, and bows before smiling and giving an invite to the feast and rushing back home to start the cooking.

What a nice woman. Continuing to trudge down the road, there comes Kyoko, Haru, Hana and Ryohei jogging in front of them. Each of them (respectively) was asked _the question_.

Kyoko smiled. "Why, if I was really going to choose, I would really wish that crème puff shop would give boxes out for free, and I would get four full boxes." She then blushed. "You don't think I'm fat, do you?

In fact, the sad look that she saw was reflecting what probably Tsuna would have wore. Tsuna was definitely not on her thoughts at all. Poor Tsuna. He just had to fall for the oblivious ones.

Haru bounced happily. "Haru would make a HUGE Christmas bento for her beloved husband Tsuna-san, and they would have a romantic date at a traditional Japanese festival with drums and dancing! Tsuna-san would then take me out to a romantic dinner in a white suit and give a red rose through his teeth..." She paused. "Hahi? Why are you looking at Haru strangely?"

The strange look, in fact, was one of pity for Tsuna. Looks like here, Tsuna was all over her thoughts. And her imagination wasn't even Tsuna at all, but some cool suave guy. Poor Tsuna. He had made someone fall for him but...

Hana tossed her hair. "I want to meet that hunky guy!"

And that was it. No long-winded sentences, no extra-long additions to the list. Hana was as blunt as always, which makes for it to be a trifle boring but very practical.

Ryohei gave a sparkly grin and a thumbs-up, giving a good Rock Lee impression without the spandex. "Go EXTREME training!"

(The funniest thing, dear reader, was that there the two are, soul mates. Hana and Ryohei. But one is obsessed with a guy that exists as a snotty brat who she is allergic to, another has no inclinations to romance at all. How will they ever get together? That is the question of the day, boys and girls).

But moving on, Yamamoto is standing, as expectedly, in front of the sushi shop, sweeping the entrance out for the day's customers. He smiles a smile that bedazzles all women, and make all fan-girls swoon. "Hello!"

Asking him _the question, _he leans on the broom thoughtfully. "Maybe a sunny day for some good baseball training with the kid at Tsuna's house? That was fun. Or maybe a good day of customers for the sushi shop, or a real game of baseball." He smiles again. "That's all I want, really."

Nearly tearing up at Yamamoto's simple wishes, before another question could be asked, a slow voice comes through the doorway.

"Yamamoto?" She asks slowly, "who're you talking to?"

"Haha, Alice! See," Yamamoto moved to the side to reveal a blank-faced girl wearing baggy grey clothes, "she was asking what you wouldlike for Christmas or ideal gift or an ideal Christmas?"

Alice, being asked _the question_ paused for a long while. The chopsticks in her hair even started to droop. She seemed like a very slow person. "...Maybe a nice quiet day in the apartment on that lounge under the air-conditioning. A break from craziness for normality."

"Haha!" Yamamoto laughs, "But don't want you want to hang out with Tsuna?" Seeing Alice's dead-pan face turned to him, he scratches the back of his head. "Don't question me like _that_, Alice! I mean, playing with Tsuna is pretty normal, right?"

Alice banged her head on the wall (though how did Yamamoto understand Alice through a simple glare? The mysteries of communication...)

Leaving them to it, since there was a plate of sushi set aside for Alice and the questioning must have interrupted breakfast, down the street was surprisingly, Grey.

The butler is holding some grocery bags full of fresh produce. He was asked _the question. _He smiled calmly in a perfect professional _butlery _smile. There is no other way to describe it. "Of course I want Miss to become more responsible, like cleaning up her room after herself. And stop making unreasonable requests like asking me to make dinner in ten minutes. I, of course, can make a three course meal that's succulent and tasty while still adjusting it according to Miss's tastes, but she should stop making demands like that. It is bad for the personality."

Getting so much information in one go was surprising (of course, who knew that dead-pan girl had a side like that?), and the answering was cut off by him talking about the time.

Wondering if mentioning Alice was back at Yamamoto's sushi shop would have helped, the questioning wandered to the shopping district. There, there was a Discipline Committee member beating up thugs. Kusakabe answered _the question_ gracefully.

"Why, of course my wish is to follow Iinchou for Namimori! We all love Namimori, and following Iinchou is the best way!"

When asked what Hibari would have liked for Christmas (because really, who would approach him for a question like _that?_) Kusakabe smiled.

"I already know – he wants all students to behave with discipline and stop crowding the roof. And defeat some guy called Mukuro."

As both answers were totally expected, moving on to the next store was, surprise, Chrome. She suddenly turned into Mukuro. Mukuro therefore, answered _the question _instead.

"Kufufu... now, if I answered, the wish wouldn't come true now would it? Wishes have to be kept secret."

When pressed, he finally gave in.

"I wish people would stop calling my hair pineapple. It is a perfectly respectable hair-do, a very shounen manga hairdo with spikes. Just because the spikes are at the back of my head does not mean that it is a pineapple. Do pineapples have faces? No, of course not. Therefore, it would be appreciated if no-one called my head a pineapple."

He finished this off with a suave smile that looked way too smooth to not be covering something up. "Well, I've talked a long time. I think I'm tired."

And with a puff of mist, Chrome was standing there blinking in confusion. Poor Chrome. When asked _the question,_ she didn't answer and instead chose to bow and run away.

Shyness did have limits sometimes...

The next store was a pet shop. A very beautiful woman was looking at the snakes and shaking her head. Apparently, none of them were poisonous. She was asked the _question._

"_Ah! Reborn!"_

And that was all the response that was elicited from her, as Shamal ran in and she threw a poisonous pot of something at his face and running away. Shamal instead finished answering.

"Ah, mademoiselle, my wish is to take you out for dinner, maybe on that cruise ship that's leaving tomorrow!" Whipping out a bouquet of flowers, he goes on one knee. "Christmas is a time of rebirth! Let us be reborn together!"

Ignoring him, (he was disturbing), the next shop held no-one, but the very own ranking Fuuta!

But then, time's up, so there was no time to ask Fuuta to use the Ranking Star's power to rank all the Christmas Wishes and see which one would be the biggest and most important...

* * *

**Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone had lots of fun – please review!**

**NOTE – MANY PEOPLE ASKING ABOUT PAIRING. PAIRING HAS NOT BEEN DECIDED, AND WILL NOT BE UNTIL MANY CHAPTERS LATER. But if you really don't like the Hibari parts of this fic, go to Accessblade's! Hers is definitely TsunaxOC. XD **

**MERRY CHRISTMAS AGAIN! Thanks for reading; the last bit was random but fun. I hope you enjoyed it!**


	34. And fighting

I was fidgeting. Hibari stood impassively in front of me.

Awkward.

… should I try to start conversation? But he probably wouldn't answer anyway, and then it would be even _more _awkward.

I decided to leave it at that.

We had reached the twelfth level already, but for some reason, the door didn't open. We waited for a while (like, two minutes, not that long) with Hibari getting more and more annoyed with every second. I guess two minutes was his maximum (though I was surprised he even lasted that long) and he just kind of… exploded?

Yeah, he exploded. I just kind of stood there with wide eyes at the sudden lit tonfa he was holding, and then he went to bash through the door.

I lunged at him. I had the duty to hide him until he reached Yamamoto! It shouldn't be that hard, but when talking about Hibari… I sighed even while lunging and pouring Flames over both of us.

Why were Katekyo characters so crazy?

One hit, and the door dented. Another and there was a gaping hole. A kick and it flew off.

I gaped. I truly understand why people think Hibari is the strongest guardian now. That door looked like thick metal. Really thick metal. Oh gosh, that was scary.

"Hn."

I stared at him in disbelief. And all he said after _that_ was an 'hn'_?_

_I will never understand these people. Never._

* * *

When running behind a rampant Hibari, normally a person would want to stay far far away.

I had to run right behind him.

He hadn't gotten out Roll yet, but running behind him, and going through wall after wall after wall with Hibari never seeming to tire, I scanned for any Millefiore members. I wasn't very useful after all, if talking about monstrous strength to crash through walls.

This continued for a while (though the lack of security was alarming – Millefiore soldiers had been told to avoid this floor though so they were probably attributing the cameras being affected by Yamamoto and Genkishi's fight. Yamamoto hadn't lasted very long though…)

"Uh, Hibari?" I puffed even as he ran through another room completely calm and not lacking in breath at all (damn inhuman stamina freaks). "We should hurry."

Then he did this totally annoying 'hn'. I knew it was annoying. It had that type of 'I-look-down-on-you' inflection to it.

I know I was the one out of breath, but did he really have to rub it in? I grumbled under my breath, even as Hibari cast an amused smirk at me. Don't ask me how I knew it was amused. I just _knew. _But for some reason, he did listen and he ran even faster. I kept up. Barely. But I kept up. I think he was running slow on purpose, but I dismissed it, because how would Hibari be so nice? That would be like Reborn giving free lollipops to children from the kindness of his heart.

I paused. And shuddered.

But, thinking about Reborn and Hibari… they both had some kind of permanent expression on their faces right?

Reborn had his perma-smirk (that was evil, I tell you), and Hibari's perma-bored-face that metamorphoses into a bloodthirsty smirk when he was fighting… (Secretly, I think Hibari and Reborn are secret smirk buddies. They do it all the time.)

Yamamoto had his perma-nice-guy-smile, Gokudera his perma-scowl except when next to Tsuna, where it suddenly becomes a perma-Juudaime-is-so-awesome face.

Hmm… If thinking about perma-expressions, did I have one?

All my friends told me I glared.

A perma-glare?

But I didn't mean to glare! I mean, just because my eyes were yellow doesn't mean they're torchy!

I scowled.

Hn.

…

I did not just copy Hibari.

I shook my head, and leapt over a piece of rubble and tried to stay on task. Although I ran fast, I had no stamina at all. Maybe Spartan Teacher No.1 had a point when he said keeping up with training was important…

I hadn't thought about them in a while.

Strange really, because just a year before they dominated my thoughts. Maybe it was because Tsuna's stressed aura. Everyone, no matter what the anime or manga had portrayed, were a little more depressed here in the future.

But faking to cover feelings were important, because who would want to drag down the others?

The problem was though; the closer a person is with another, the more they notice the tiniest change. I guess that was why Tsuna was always trying so hard. He was the one that we were all closest to.

We continued running through walls until Hibari suddenly stopped. I braked next to him, just stopping from crashing into him. He calmly walked to the wall in front of him and lit up another Ring, pushing his flame into his box weapon, only to let two Rolls out. The little porcupine squeaked happily when it saw Hibari, the second one squeaked at me.

I pointed to myself in surprise, and the second Roll closed its eyes in affirmation and squeaked again.

How… cute. I kind of wanted to touch it, but the first Roll going forward (_whirring_ – how did it spin so fast?) to crash through the wall stopped me from fulfilling my curiosity and made me focus on the task at hand. I quickly retracted my Flames. Genkishi had to see Hibari to stop killing Yamamoto after all.

The wall cracked dramatically. Hibari seemed to not have quelled his urge for dramatic entrances in the last ten or so years. I sighed. Meanwhile, Hibari started walking leisurely forward, somehow not getting hit by the rocks still falling from the demolished wall.

I, one the other hand, had to dodge _four_ _huge_ pieces the size of my head. I stared at Hibari and how he was walking slowly towards Genkishi without a speck of dust on his suit.

How did he do that?

A fifth rock came down and I quickly stumbled behind Hibari, ordering my flames above me so I could at least have warning before some random rock plunged into my head.

As expected, Genkishi was there, holding out a sword in preparation for Hibari, who had this _very_ dangerous smirk on his face.

I looked at him like that and sighed. That's what I didn't get about the Hibari ten-years-future. He wasn't as easy to read as the Hibari from my time. I mean, Hibari from ten-years-before was just like a spoilt brat who loved fighting like a new toy and Namimori as if it was his parent. This ten-year-later Hibari had grown from being ruled by pride.

Of course, it shouldn't be like that. He should still be exactly the same prideful, fight loving Hibari as in ten years ago.

I had a revelation.

Was this the worrying thing? That strange behaviour started from this growth? I suddenly examined him closer, regretting that I didn't before because now in his fight with Genkishi he would be swapped and I needed the answers now, not later. What made him grow?

"Ah, you there, perfect timing," Hibari said as he saw Yamamoto on the floor. "Is the white and round device up ahead?" He asked even as he held up his hand for his Ring to shatter, and Roll still whirring behind him.

I was the watcher that stood slightly behind Roll, staring at Hibari, peering at happenings and nodded when all was going to plot. Yamamoto looked more beat up that I expected though…

Genkishi only stayed silent, staring at Hibari with the perfect poker face. I carefully went around Roll around that time, silently moving forward to stand a little behind Hibari. Genkishi's eyes turned to my eyes and my Flame, and his eyes widened in understanding. In the meanwhile, I was splitting my attention between Hibari and Yamamoto.

Hibari had changed just by this. If it was ten-years before, Hibari would just have seen the sword, smirked and then charged in while murmuring 'I'll bite you to death,' etc. _This _Hibari however, deigned to ask his question a second time.

Then I looked at Yamamoto and worried. There was a lot of blood…

"I'll ask you one more time," Hibari said yet again to Genkishi, ignoring Lal Mirch (who was unconscious), Yamamoto (lying bloody at Genkishi's feet) and me (who was trying to discreetly slip around Hibari to check Yamamoto without slipping on the rubble all the while trying to stare at him).

Well, at least that ignoring part of him hadn't changed. "Is the white and round device up ahead?" Hibari asked with his tonfa out and ready but unlit.

"The Vongola Cloud and Star Guardian… Hibari Kyoya and Brighteye Alice… huh," he said in a deep voice. Hibari tensed a little, and I instantly tried to block all my theories on how Hibari had changed and become alert. I started reaching down into my fake pockets. "There is no need to answer your question," Genkishi said closing his eyes in dismissal and opening a box, "for you will meet your end here."

And all I could see were sea slugs coming out of his box and covering everything. Sometimes, I could see a flash of green, and after two seconds the sea slugs had blurred to a green tinge. I frowned. Something wasn't right here. I should be seeing lush green grass and forest, shouldn't I?

Or maybe because I was Brighteye? But Chrome's illusions worked. Was it because he was using his box weapon to enhance his powers? Was that why it didn't work? Maybe our brains were just fundamentally different…

Hm, interesting.

"Ah," Hibari said with a slight smile/smirk, "it seems you are a Mist Illusionist." I was too busy trying not to grimace at the still sea slugs around my feet to see Genkishi's face. "Though I don't bear any particular grudge against you," Hibari continued as if talking about weather, "I despise Illusionists."

Hibari slid a Ring onto his finger and turned his kind of smile smirk to Genkishi (who still had that poker face on, now I that I ignore the disgusting slugs everywhere). Then he said something totally Hibari.

"It makes me want to force you to grovel at my feet."

Then his smirk turned positively evil.

I dead-panned.

Really?

It seemed like that unsettled fight with Mukuro since ten years ago was still very fresh with Hibari. He held grudges like a hormonal teenage girl, really.

He lit his Ring, and the flame was abnormally huge yet again. I could see tiny cracks spreading out on the Ring already.

"Hibari Kyoya…" Genkishi murmured yet again, his face even more dead than mine. "I've heard that you're the strongest of the Vongola Guardians. Allow me to confirm the truth of that rumour."

And with all his polite words, he just started attacking with incredibly fast sea slugs.

They were not invisible to me, but I was not superhuman either. While Hibari had immediately leapt into the air and blocked slugs with parts of Roll, I had clumsily run sideways, keeping my flame around me for an impromptu alert system. Not that it worked of course, since they were too fast to really dodge completely. I already had a gash on my arm. I hissed at the sight of blood.

"It is better to face one strong opponent than two." Genkishi said, and I saw at least fifty sea slugs coming towards me. I widened my eyes, before closing them and waiting for them to hit (at least I wouldn't die… would I?) when I heard a series of explosions in front of me. I opened my eyes to see a purple wall.

I stared at the wall in surprise. Hibari? Why would he protect me? I looked up to see sharp narrowed eyes, looking down at me even as he was still in mid-air. Even Genkishi had widened his eyes.

"I'm impressed you could evade and protect a comrade from an invisible attack," Genkishi said even as he ran forward towards me and jumped over the Roll barrier and came right up to my face. I already had my guns ready, and I fired at him, only for him to dodge even at point-blank range and slash out with his sword.

I cried out, mostly from pain and surprise, before starting to get woozy. Was something on his blade or something? No, that wasn't it; his second sword had hit me on the head straight after the first slash. How fast was he moving?

"I did hear you didn't care for anyone except for…" I faintly heard Genkishi say to Hibari before a hitting sound interrupted what he was saying, but I wasn't really sure because everything was sounding really blurred…

When I closed my eyes, Hibari had landed in front of me, tonfas flaming purple.

* * *

I blinked.

Where was I?

This place seemed slightly familiar, strangely enough. There was a fireplace, and around that were two sofas, and around _that_ were huge towering bookshelfs all seemingly lit by dim sunlight.

Err; I didn't get pulled into my mind again, did I? I mean, Mukuro did call me into my mind. Wait, this wasn't it, my mind was a heck lot uglier. Wasn't it a grey room with yellow curtains over the only window? No huge airy bookshelves.

Going to one of the sofas and sitting down, I fidgeted awkwardly.

Was this my unconsciousness or something?

A grunt made me jump in surprise, and I looked to my left to see a tower or books with legs.

… what?

"Oi, help me here, won't you?" A grunt came from the books-with-legs.

I stared.

Then got up and picked up the first four books from the pile to see a head.

Oh, this was Bill. I thought I had seen one of Gokudera's Unidentified Mysterious Animals there (I didn't peek at one of his magazines, I swear. They were interesting though).

"Bill," I said with surprise. He looked up at me.

"Thanks," he grumbled before waddling over to the tiny table that just popped into existence. "I was rehashing on some books."

I followed him, and put the four books on his pile before sitting down again. "Did you call me here?"

"That's obvious," he snorted. Then he took a tissue out of his pocket and blew his nose. "Sorry, hay fever."

I raised an eyebrow. Angels got hay fever?

"Anyway, this is something pretty important," he said even as he threw the tissue away in a trash can and washed his hands on a sink that popped out of the table. "You know your plot?"

I wondered where this was going. "Yeah?"

"Well, you know how Byakuran is killed in yours?"

"…Yeah?"

"Well, Byakuran has a Brighteye called Belle. She's pretty loud. Anyway, in hers, Tsuna dies."

…

"What?" I asked blankly. I did not just hear what he said.

Bill sighed. "Don't go in denial on me, it wasn't my fault," he grumbled. I raised an eyebrow. How was this not his fault? "It's because your plot had time-travel in it. I _hate_ time-travel."

"How we leapt into the future? But isn't that in… Belle's plot too?" That was her name, right?

"Yeah, but that didn't include you." He pointed a finger at me, before his face started contorting and he whipped out another tissue to blow in. "Achoo! I hate hay fever…" he muttered, throwing his tissue in the bin and washing his hands yet again. Was he a neat freak?

The fireplace crackled when I absorbed his words.

"Why is it so different when I'm here?"

"Well, because _you_ time-travelled," he said, "the world's balance has been disrupted."

I scowled. It wasn't as if I wanted to. Blame it on Shouichi and his sneaky ammo in that stamp-less post box. I knew curiosity was bad.

"Why is only because of me?"

He sighed, rubbing his nose with yet another tissue.

"I mentioned something like I could only stuff fifty people in one world right? Well, Belle filled your number fifty spot. Now you come in from the past, and of course you're the previous owner of that spot. Now there're two people contesting for that one spot, and it doesn't work that way. So now the world is unstable, because fifty is the maximum number of trial people I can stuff in."

"Why?" I asked, rightfully curious. This was important.

"Well, all of you people don't belong in the world; therefore you can change people's fates easier. So therefore, if something happened from an after effect of a previous 'Brighteye', the mission is to stop that from happening, yeah?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"But the world can only accept so much change at one time. I calculated the maximum amount of change would be around fifty people for the world you're in. Now there's fifty_-one_ people. And your plots clash."

"So?"

"So that means anything can happen. The world won't be stable until one of your plots win."

I nodded, trying to absorb all this information at once. Why was this happening to me? This seems like a very rare situation. Was I really that unlucky?

…Maybe. Maybe Tsuna's unluckiness had finally rubbed off on me.

I sighed.

"So…" I said, trying to make sense of this situation. I had already been stressed! Why _now?_ "Her objective is to kill Tsuna as per her plot."

"Yes."

"So that Byakuran can create a new world or something?"

Bill nodded with a grumpy smile on his face. "You're catching on."

"And that also means that she acquires Uni when she's un-drugged and awake."

"Yes."

"So does Tsuna die in her plot around the Choice battle? If he did, then everything makes sense."

"Yup."

I thought for a bit. "So my objective is to get Tsuna alive in the Choice battle, where she'll be most likely pulling strings. If I successfully protect Tsuna, he'll of course volunteer to protect Uni, and I have to guard the plot from there."

"Mhmm," Bill nodded, flipping through a book. "You're getting your facts right."

I stared at my hands. "So therefore, her objective is to kill Tsuna off, so that he wouldn't have the chance to protect Uni, which makes it really easy for Byakuran to get Uni and the Trinisette and make a new world."

"Yup."

I frowned for a moment.

"Hey Bill," I looked at him and waited for him to look up from his book. "Even if I do succeed in protecting Tsuna in the Choice battle, would the plot be righted right away?"

He shook his head. "No, because your objective, Byakuran, is still alive. Tsuna can still be killed, so she could still get her plot right. So in a way, she got the advantage because if she kills Tsuna, everything is fine while you have to continue straight to the end where Byakuran is waiting so Tsuna can kill him."

I paused, before banging my head on a wall that miraculously popped up for me. It was even padded.

"Why me?" I bemoaned. "Everything was going fine, and something like _this_ comes up?"

Bill shrugged even as he pulled out a tissue, flipped a page, and threw another log into the fireplace.

"That's why I hate time-travel. Oh, I forgot to tell you."

I looked at him, seriously considering if crying was appropriate to this situation. I certainly felt like I wanted to.

"What?"

"Don't contact the other Brighteyes. At all." He flipped another page, talking as he went. "It's your spot that's unstable right now; interacting with the other Brighteyes of the future might make the world even more unstable. So if you're going to interact with a Brighteye, do it only with Belle."

He stopped to blow his nose. "She can't interact with the others either, so you two have a same playing field in that area at least."

Great. Now I can't even look up what type of person she was.

"And this is the most important of all." Bill continued, putting down the book and looking seriously at me. "You know what happens when your mission fails right?" I looked at him. "When your mission fails," he said solemnly, "you have failed your Trial. Therefore you'll be deemed unworthy and denied access to Heaven."

I sat and stared.

Bill picked up another tissue and blew his nose.

"Bye, I've told you what I needed to." He waved his hand at me, and the library started to fade. "It seems like your body had recovered enough anyway."

And then, very reminiscent of how I had disappeared into my eight year old body, I went back to consciousness.

* * *

"_Irie-sama, we've discovered the cause of the anomaly at the Box Weapon test site, where Genkishi is."_

_Irie continued to look at the screen where Tsuna was fighting the Deathstalk Squad. They were staring off; Tsuna preparing for his next attack while the Deathstalk Squad confused by Tsuna's sudden burst of strength. Spanner was at the corner, furiously typing out formulas and adjustments in his laptop with a flickering hologram of a smirking baby with a yellow pacifier next to him, watching the fight._

"_What was it?"_

_The Cervello turned to face him respectfully. "Hibari Kyoya."_

_He jerked in shock. "What?" He asked, finally turning away from the screen. "Then the third intruder was… Hibari?"_

"_Yes, although how he went to the Box Weapon test site unnoticed is probably because of another intruder." One of the Cervello answered him. _

"_Who?"_

"_We don't know." She answered. The other spoke up._

"_We were able to monitor the Box Weapon test site. There's no doubt about Hibari Kyoya being one of the intruders."_

_Irie turned away from them, his head spinning out all sorts of theories even as he watched the Vongola Tenth fight. "Put it on-screen," he ordered them, and the Cervello did so._

_What the screen showed confused him._

"_What is this…?" he asked, as the camera panned over a huge glowing spiked surface._

"_The specifics are unclear, but we believe it to be Hibari's Box Weapon." One of the Cervello answered immediately, looking at the screen as well. "Genkishi and Hibari are most likely inside."_

"_Inside?" Irie muttered as he stared at screen, his eyes unreadable._

* * *

I woke up next to a giant glowing white spiked sphere thing, and momentarily that gave reassurance that the plot was going well. Until my thoughts caught up.

What? So if I don't defeat this Belle guy, then all I have done is for nothing? I groaned. I seriously knew I should have chosen another plot. Why, of all things to happen, did all this happen to me?

I sat up to rest my head on the white wall thing that I knew Hibari and Genkishi were fighting in. What could I do to get my mind off things now?

Ah! Yamamoto and Lal Mirch!

I went to get up, only to wince when my arm failed me. I stared at it. Not _again_. My hands had just healed, and now my arm was hurt? What's with the injury accumulation?

I sighed, before getting up with my left arm. For some reason, now that I knew that there was another Brighteye out there wanting to ruin my plot made me feel blank. And detached. What was I supposed to do anyway?

Do what I could do right now, I guess.

I staggered up, looking in surprise at the blood that was covering the slugs I had been lying on. There was quite a bit. Shouldn't I be unconscious right about now?

Hmm, that question of how much blood I could lose until I passed out came up again. It would be useful to know, but _how_ I was going to know was beyond me.

I couldn't even talk to the other Brighteyes now.

I sighed again, even as I staggered up and started walking around the spiky sphere thing. It was a good thing I didn't try to contact the others before this, or I might've destroyed the balance or something.

Just as I was about to give up (I was in a cloud of my own – I was still shocked. What do I do now?) I stumbled over Yamamoto. I stared down at him a little disbelievingly. Here was part of the plot.

Flopping down next to him, I poked him a little. He was part of the plot. Then I poked myself. I wasn't. Then I poked him again. He was part of the plot. I poked myself. I wasn't. What was so different between us? We didn't feel any different.

…Who was I kidding? We were way different. He was human, and part of the plot. I didn't know what I am, and not part of the plot.

What did Bill tell me to do?

Oh yeah. 'Protect the plot'.

I had being doing just that, haven't I? Watching Tsuna throughout all those boring primary school years where I had to stop myself from making them stop bullying him. Then middle school, where everything heated up and making sure he met all the characters in the right places, got the right relationships. Then going up to the fighting, where I vowed to get stronger so that I could _protect the plot. _Joining in on fights so that I could keep track of things.

All those years of training from when I was 'eight'. Then doing my mission from when I was 'twelve'. Seven years of dedicated work.

All for a trial that could fail.

So what was it now? 'Protect the plot'? 'Finish your mission'?

The worst thing was that, didn't Bill say one of the plots had to win? That meant that another person's hard work had to be ruined because of me. Not being able to go to Heaven because of a stupid mistake that wasn't even our fault.

I sighed.

I could not fail. But I didn't want to win either. Added to the fact…

I poked Yamamoto again. Becoming close to them was forbidden, wasn't it? I had long realised that everybody here weren't characters, they were people. People had feelings, had layers like a never-ending onion. I know they had become close to me.

Staring at a random spike, I groaned. What was with me? I shouldn't be questioning why I was here.

What I _should_ be doing was checking if Yamamoto was okay, not poking him.

Slowly levering myself toward him, I put two fingers on his neck. Good, there was a pulse. Then assessed his injuries. Not too bad. A few cuts here and there, no broken bones at all. But what was concerning was his head injury. That was where the blood was coming from.

Any blood coming from the head was bad.

Knowing there wasn't much else I could do I sighed and leaned back. Then ripped a piece of Yamamoto's shirt (it was torn anyway – wool isn't good for injuries and I was wearing a sweater) to tie around my arm. It started bleeding through nearly straight away, but better than nothing right?

I slapped myself.

Yes. Now all I had to do was focus on the present. Who cares about Bill? If I didn't want to protect the plot, I could just say I was protecting the people I cared about.

Because I certainly cared about them now.

Dammit.

Just as I was about to relax (as much as I could anyway, with sea slugs dripping down and an unconscious person beside me), the wall started to crumble. I cursed, before scrambling up and tugging Yamamoto away from the rubble that was once again falling on top of our heads.

Stopping five metres away, I assessed my guns. I couldn't really hold anything with my right hand, but my left should do fine. Although my aim was more off for my left hand…

After checking Yamamoto was okay, I headed back towards where the hemisphere had been. In the dust, there was the shadow of Genkishi looking away distantly at something, no other apparent silhouette.

I stumbled over where I thought Hibari would be. I guessed correctly.

"Midori, hana-miku," a tiny voice sang out, and a small yellow bird flew above the dust and landed on my shoulder. I stared at it, not used to it being so small (now that I had seen ten-year-future Hibari's big grown-up one).

"Hibird?"

It finished our school song, and Genkishi was staring at me with dazed eyes when it hopped off my shoulder and flew to another person.

Hibari raised a finger, Hibird landing neatly on it.

"What a racket," he murmured with a yawn, even as he started to sit up. At his voice, Genkishi immediately snapped out of his daze.

"Y-you…!"

"Who… are you?" Hibari demanded slowly, even as the dust haze only started to settle. His eyes had already zoomed onto him. I kind of wanted to laugh. Already demanding answers? "Do you know what happens to someone who disturbs my sleep?"

I decided to keep quiet.

"Hibari! Hibari!" Hibird chirped even as its master finally stood up with a yawn, his gaze tuned to Genkishi. It flew off his finger, and flew behind him to land on my shoulder. I petted it softly with my finger. Maybe Hibari hadn't noticed me yet.

Genkishi narrowed his eyes even as Hibari looked around. I didn't move. And he never bothered to fully turn around. I smiled. For some reason, having this Hibari here, right now, was reassuring. Because Hibari never changes. Unlike his ten-years-later self…

"Wow," he said as he walked forward towards Genkishi, "what kind of trick is this? I believe I was just taking a nap on my school's roof." He stopped and looked fully at him. "Hey, you. In Nami-chu,"

Genkishi jolted as he looked back at Hibari.

"Those eyebrows would violate school regulations." Hibari finished, with a perfectly straight tone.

I fought down the urge to laugh, for the first time in weeks.

The first thing he says to a stranger holding four swords in a strange environment is _that?_

Genkishi had the decency to look shocked, even as I was shaking with suppressed laughter. His eyes zoomed to me. "Th-this is…" he actually tried to protest.

"Oh well," Hibari interrupted, "anyway, why is our school's missing student lying unconscious here?" He asked seriously.

Genkishi was obviously back on solid ground. His face went back to his blank state.

"I defeated Yamamoto Takeshi."

After hearing that, Hibari immediately tensed, and I recognised his I'm-ready-to-battle pose (you can't help but learn these things when you get chased for a few months by someone like him).

"Oh, you did?" He said darkly, even as a drought of wind from the open door came through. "That simplifies things." He brought up his tonfa. "Your actions can be considered an attack on Nami-chu. Therefore, I will dole out the appropriate punishment."

Even as he said this, I could see the smirk growing on his face and grinned. His simple-mindedness was amazing.

He lunged, and Genkishi only used a hint of Mist flames and drew his sword, sheathing it back again when he sent Hibari flying back to where he had been lying before.

"You may be Hibari Kyoya," Genkishi said flatly, "but a mere child is no match for me."

And how Hibari glared. He immediately jumped back into the fight. Though after a while, I realised that they were deliberately avoiding where Yamamoto was lying. So I slowly crept there, with Hibird softly crooning a birdy ballad version of the Nami-chu school song.

So I watched, ready to jump and protect Yamamoto in if I have to, gun cocked and ready to go in my left hand.

Hibari, intent of Genkishi didn't notice me, and Genkishi, assured that I wouldn't step in until necessary, focused mainly on Hibari.

Suited me just fine.

* * *

The two of them started muttering between themselves, too softly for me to hear (or maybe that was the blood loss talking) when suddenly, everything above Genkishi's head stopped blurring green, and the sea-slugs changed colour.

It was time for the big-guns, I see.

I staggered up, apologising to Yamamoto when I used him as a lever. Hibari was looking confusedly around himself, and I guess Genkishi was making the slugs 'invisible' to his eye.

This was where Gokudera came in, didn't he? I walked forward a few steps, and looked down the open corridor. There they were, Kusakabe supporting them all. Slowly, they edged closer, and when they saw me, Kusakabe smiled, and although Gokudera scowled, it was obvious his heart wasn't in it. I smiled back, before frowning and looking back at Hibari.

Genkishi was preparing for attack, but Gokudera and the others were too far away.

I would say I was a look before I leap person, but this time there was no choice.

I willed my dizziness away and shoved Hibari down, slugs exploding over my back and skimming the skin. Tears started pooling. Ow…

"You." Hibari said eyes wide.

"Yeah?" I muttered, levering myself up and glaring at Genkishi before clumsily standing up. Hibari stood up too. Genkishi didn't react to my glare at all.

"Oh, you dodged it," he said. "But you won't this time."

I saw the slugs preparing to attack again, directing them at both Hibari and me this time. But just as it was about to hit, Gokudera's Sistema C.A.I came and blocked all of them.

I frowned.

Gokudera, you were _late_.

But… now…

I smiled, before happily falling unconscious yet again (I hope I wouldn't be making a habit of this).

Because, funny thing was,

Hibari was _very_ pissed off.

For some reason, that made me want to laugh. Though, thinking about plot…I wonder what Tsuna's doing… Did Spanner finish the contacts yet?

I didn't get time to speculate since that's what usually happens when a person falls unconscious.

* * *

When I woke up, I was in the yellow tube thing, laid next to the still unconscious Yamamoto and near Gokudera. Out there was Tsuna, talking to Shouichi and the Cervello. There was this weird hissing noise, and I shook my head and looked at Tsuna.

I staggered up and went up to the side of the yellow tube thingy.

"Tsuna?" I said, coughing a bit from the weird smell the gas had. My voice bounced off the walls strangely.

Gokudera was the next to wake, then Kusakabe.

"Damn it, what a nightmare…" Gokudera muttered, his voice also bouncing off the walls. "How could I attack the boss?"

Kusakabe got up and looked around. "Where are we?" he muttered with his ever present piece of grass between his teeth. It seemed he didn't lose it even when he was running, drugged, and woken up again…

He turned around and immediately got to his feet. "Kyo-san! And Chrome-san!"

"Everyone!" Tsuna cried, his voice somehow reaching inside the tube thing. Gokudera looked past me, and his eyes widened when he saw his beloved Juudaime.

"Th-that's… Juudaime! Juudaime!" He tried running to him, only to bang his nose on the yellow tinted tube thing. "Wh-what is this?"

"Gokudera, we're trapped in a see-through tube. We can't get out," I said quietly to him, voice a little raspy. He looked at me in surprise, before looking back at Tsuna and starting to bang on the surface.

Kusakabe summed it up in three words. "We've been captured."

"Give up;" one of the Cervello's voices echoed in the tube to Gokudera, "you won't be able to break through that capsule with your bare hands."

Gokudera didn't hold back on the cursing.

"You're one of those Cervello women!" he said (excluding the swear words). "Why are you here?"

"Your lives are in our hands." Shouichi said, his calm voice a bit flat as he took a casual glance at us. "You better not try anything funny."

"Irie Shouichi!" Kusakabe exclaimed, adding to the drama of it all. I just slid down tiredly, and leant on the capsule's side trying to avoid sitting on Yamamoto. Tsuna was still staring at us all worriedly, and when his eyes slid to me, I gave him a tired smile.

"We need to talk; can you pipe down in there for a while?"

"Talk?" Gokudera snappishly replied immediately. I groaned. His voice echo just made my head ache… "Don't give us that crap after locking us up!"

As I knew what was going to happen, I tried to tune them out, shoving all stupid niggling thoughts away into a box, and trying to relax.

They were gasping pretty loudly though, when they saw what was inside the device. It was a miracle that Yamamoto didn't wake up. I frowned, and checked his pulse again. It was weaker than before, but still there. I breathed a sigh of relief, taking a curious glance at the device myself.

Yup, I was only a bunch of ashes. That was pretty morbid, actually…

There was nothing else I could do in this… capsule thing, was there?

I should take advantage of the time to try and sort out what I was feeling right now. I felt crappy.

So I closed my eyes and tried to let the voices wash over me, letting my sub-consciousness do the work of analysing their speech to see if they were still on plot.

* * *

I woke up to their frantic shouting.

Looking around, and shuffled and peered through the gap between Lal's leg and the side of the capsule. Irie was already sitting on the floor, and Lal was standing up. If his cloak was off…

"Juudaime, don't listen to him! It might be a trap!"

"That's right!" Lal yelled, on the same mindset as Gokudera. "Restrain him, Sawada!"

Poor Shouichi seemed frustrated. He ruffled his hair with a hand, before trying to appeal to Tsuna again (as he seemed to be the only one that had a mite chance of believing him). "I know it'll be impossible for you to believe me right away, but I want you to at least hear me out!"

"You can't, Juudaime!" Gokudera yelled, hitting the capsule walls for emphasis. Hibari stood up, and Kusakabe's attention immediately went to his boss.

"Kyo-san."

Hibari only narrowed his eyes.

Gokudera was drawing breath to yell again, and I knew that wasn't good because hey, this was the part where Shouichi explained it all.

"Everyone," I said quietly. Gokudera stopped and looked at my in confusion. "Listen to what Shouichi wants to say."

Gokudera looked at me. "Idiot! You weren't even awake to know what happened between that Irie guy and Juudaime!" He yelled before looking back outside at Tsuna. Tsuna was also looking at me with confusion, clearly a bit overwhelmed with all that was happening.

"Alice is right," Reborn interjected. "Let's listen to what he has to say."

"Reborn-san…" Gokudera murmured, disbelief colouring his tone. Shouichi wisely chose to talk then.

"My actions were disclosed to Byakuran-san through my subordinates, and by constant camera surveillance. But now that you've messed this place up, I can finally talk to you openly. I've been waiting a long time for this moment."

Everyone except for Tsuna was silent after what he said, clearly debating to see if they wanted to believe him or not.

"Huh, you were?" He asked, eyes wide.

Shouichi nodded. "It was our goal to meet you in this place, under these circumstances."

"Our… goal?" Tsuna echoed, once again confused.

"Wh-what are you talking about?" Gokudera yelled at Shouichi. Shouichi ignored him and stood up, his knees not buckling as much anymore.

"It's true that the Millefiore brought you to this time to take the Vongola Rings. So it's no surprise that you're all here with them."

"So you're after the Vongola Rings!"

"If I simply wanted to take them," Shouichi answered Gokudera, "I wouldn't have needed to summon you here to Merone Base!"

"Summon?"

But then everything became too out-of-focus to concentrate, and I wondered why until I saw how my arm was _still_ bleeding. Huh. A miracle. So I could probably go for hours with something bleeding heavily, eh?

Oh whatever.

I closed my eyes, my head spinning more than I would have liked, and the voices started turning into an incomprehensive babble.

At least I didn't black out this time. I think I slept instead.

* * *

Irie Shouichi let everyone out while we were waiting for news from Italy, and I was shook awake by none other than Tsuna himself.

"Are you okay, Alice? You're bleeding!"

I groaned. "Yeah, kind of…"

"Irie-san got us beds, and we've already put Yamamoto on one, so next is you…" he said nervously while staring at my arm.

"Oh. Okay. Err, Tsuna can you help me up?"

Tsuna bent down and hoisted me up under my left arm, and we staggered over.

Well, half-staggered over, because Gokudera seeing Tsuna doing work like _this_ immediately rushed over.

"Juudaime! I'll help you, please sit down and rest!"

"No, Gokudera, it's just helping Alice walk to a bed to rest," Tsuna said with a little exasperated.

"But Juudaime, you fought so hard–"

"We're here, so you two can stop arguing," I cut him off and climbed onto the bed carefully by myself. "See? Anyway, Tsuna, you do seem like you need a bit of rest." I smiled at him. "You fought hard after all."

"N-no," Tsuna stuttered, "I-I mean…"

"Yeah, Juudaime! Freaky eyes is right! Please lie down on one of the beds!"

As Gokudera hustled a reluctant Tsuna away, my smile dropped and I sat there for a second before really lying down on the sheets. Just as I was settling, a silhouette blocked the lights. I squinted before recognising…

"Shouichi?"

Irie Shouichi was standing there with an awkward look to his face.

"I-I just wanted to thank you for your support earlier. I mean, they wouldn't have listened as quickly without you."

I chuckled. "No, they would've listened anyway. Gokudera is just a bit loud, after all."

He laughed a bit too, before sitting tentatively at the end of the bed, and I had to roll my eyes up to see his face.

"Well, that wasn't the only reason I came here anyway. There's also another reason."

Huh? I sat up carefully, looking at Irie fully now.

"What?"

"Ah, well…" he wiped his glasses nervously before putting them on again. "Umm, I'm sorry for asking but…"

"But?" I prompted.

"Do you… have a whole box of diaries somewhere?"

I stared at him. Huh? Wait, didn't Jared show me a box of diaries somewhere?

How did he know?

He misinterpreted my expression.

"Oh, I meant like, do you have a whole box of diaries that are just repeated over and over again? Because, umm, if you do I wanted to tell you something…"

* * *

**And that's the newest chapter! I typed all this in one day, so HAHA!**

**I just wanted to say something PLEASE READ**

**Lately, everyone has been saying how, err, not humourful it's been like. I just wanted to say that I wanted to convey the moods of the arcs. Like, at the start it was all happy, right? Then I slowly introduced a little emo-ness (then full-blown stuff, but that's not the point…) when I felt that it was the low part of the series. **

**Because to me, before the Choice battle is when they're all unsure, questioning why they were in the future and wondering if they could ever go back to a peaceful Namimori. All the other parts after (and before) it are more… light hearted? Yeah. I deliberately didn't put a genre to this because I wanted to expand. I wanted to try sarcasm, emo-ness, full blown angst (that'll be later), humour, romance, friendship, emotions. I wanted to see if I could do it. I know that my writing has become more serious, and people may not like it as much, but as you can see in the genre part it is **_**not**_** just a humour fic. So when it goes back to light-heartedness, my writing would reflect that.**

**Please believe me. ^^ **

**And also, I want to say, thank you. Thank you to all of you readers who have bothered to slog through the first ten or so slow chapters, gone through the slightly better twenties, then the emo twenty-fives to thirties. It means so much to me that people read this, and review of course (haha).**

**To my reviewers that, well, **_**review, **_**I want to say, even though I don't reply most of the time, I really appreciate them. Just knowing someone read, and was bothered to review means a great deal to, I think, any writer. I would want to say, PLEASE REVIEW and not provide an explanation yet again, but I think this is due long enough. Thank you for reading! I know my writing has ups and downs (very well aware, in fact…) so knowing that people stick to my fic is a wonderful feeling!**

**There was a spoiler here before, but now I have deleted it! Ain't that awesome! XD For all you later readers, I guess you can keep guessing about the plot, ohoho!**

**So please! I'm glad you all read this, happy, joyful, and just plain moved. This story has come a long way (THIRTY CHAPTERS! I think it's nearly one and a half years old or something), so thank you for sticking with me! I hope you, and I, can keep enjoying how the story turns out!**


	35. Revelations upon revelations

**Hey! I'm glad everyone understood my message. Info-dump here, so don't feel ashamed to ask questions! I will try to answer all of them. And friendly PMs - thank you for your offer, but I think I know where my fic is going. Love love hearts hears exude exude - I'm in a happy mood. HAPPY CHINESE (aka fobby) NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!**

* * *

Shouichi stuttered to a stop before glancing nervously at me staring at him and looking away towards Tsuna trying to brush off Gokudera. "C-can you stop glaring at me?"

I raised an eyebrow. "I was just staring at you, but many people find it a bit disconcerting. I'll stop now."

"You were just _staring_ at me?" he repeated disbelievingly. I nodded. He sighed, massaging his temples. "I've heard a lot about you from Tsuna-san, but the real one is so much more intense…"

I perked up my ears.

"Tsuna talked to you about me? The future one?"

"Of course!" Shouichi said, bobbing his head a few times. "He was in lo –" Then he clammed his mouth shut, his eyes behind the smeary glasses as wide as it was humanly possible.

"Lo…?" I prompted.

"Nothing! Anyway," he tried to continue, his face sweating bullets and his right arm sneaking towards his stomach in what I presumed, a near stomach-ache. Why was he so nervous for? "What I wanted to ask you was about the repeated diaries. Do you have any?"

Immediately getting more serious, I nodded. "Yes, I have. Jared was going through my stuff in Italy and found a whole box of them. He showed me through video feed through a computer."

"Oh," Shouichi sighed partly in what seemed like… relief? "That's good."

Huh?

Even when I gave him my full-blown confused expression, Shouichi didn't seem to get the cue. I decided to give him a much needed prompt.

"Why is that good?"

"I heard a bit about the Brighteyes from Jared-san."

I frowned. That blabbermouth. Brighteye secrets were supposed to be top secret for a reason.

"Hmm?" I said instead, deciding Shouichi didn't really deserve my annoyance since it wasn't really his fault.

"Well," he said while wiping his glasses yet again. They were fogging up, funnily enough. "I heard that you had a diary around the time you met Tsuna-san and the rest." I nodded, even though he was a bit off. He smiled at my nod, before continuing. "Well, that diary was _this_ world's recurring diary."

"Explain," I said shortly. Shouichi gulped.

"Uh, what I meant was that there are different parallel worlds right? And you know about how Byakuran defeated every single other parallel world? Well, that's not technically true." Shouichi hastily explained, and I raised an eyebrow.

"Interesting," I murmured to myself. "And I guess this is because there are too many parallel worlds to count?"

He smiled. "Yes! I'm glad someone understands!" He exclaimed. He continued blabbering excitedly. "Well, there are many worlds out there that are made of every single person's individual actions." He paused, and then blinked very deliberately before continuing. "So there's already another world where I might have blinked the second earlier, or a second later. See? There are just too many worlds to count!"

"Yes, I see. Then why do you say that Byakuran had invaded all the worlds?"

"Wait, I'm not up to that part yet," Shouichi said seriously, suddenly getting confidence now he was on the roll. I let him.

"Okay. Please continue."

He smiled and adjusted his glasses. "Well, as I said before, there are many worlds that are made by every single person's individual actions. I'm sure you're aware of how I travelled to the future with Lambo-san's ten-year bazooka ammunition?"

"Yes."

"Well, I had only about a set of twenty. So I used them whenever I did a big change in my own life. Like that one where I decided to be a musician or the other one where I decided that I would get into another university to not bump into Byakuran-san. These changes in the past led me to another main possible future of _mine_. You get me?"

"So you're saying that," I said slowly, "that you used the ten year bazooka only when you changed a major aspect of your life." Shouichi nodded encouragingly. "And that those were worlds made possible to visit because of that major change that you made."

"Yes, that's basically it, but the thing is that they were the worlds that _I_ influenced. That meant that the worlds wouldn't have changed, I'm not an important person, but the worlds I could visit changed."

"So what's that got to do with my diary?"

"This is it, Alice-san!" Shouichi exclaimed before deigning to explain once more. "But I should explain you single diary first. I heard from Jared-san that you got the diary from a trip into the future, yes?"

"Yes."

"Well, that diary is your diary from the strongest future that you have right now, the one that you're most likely going to tread. If you don't make any big changes, then the future inscribed in the diary would be held true. There are many Alice-sans out there, but the future is sometimes strangely secure."

"Huh."

"Mhmm!" Shouichi nodded enthusiastically. "But that isn't the main issue. The future gets changed very easily. I'll be getting to that now. You know how I said Byakuran-san hadn't conquered all the worlds because there were too many?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, but then many people don't realise that worlds are mostly segregated into groups."

"Groups?" I asked. "So there might be a leader or something?"

"You got it, Alice-san." Shouichi said solemnly. "There are main groups for everything. Like, there may be a huge bunch of worlds where I'm talking to you right now, but they may all be different. Byakuran-san chooses the strongest world in the group, the one that seems to have the lead in the action and dominates that world."

I frowned. "But there wouldn't be any way to see if a world is the 'leader' or not."

"That's Byakuran-san's fearsome power," Shouichi said a bit sadly. "His power just blocks any that aren't strong. My theory is that's because of how tiring it must be to link up to other selves, so to get the strongest connection would need to be the strongest world.

"The worst thing is," he continued, "is that once the leading world in a group is taken down, then the others would follow suit, slowly, but they would be eventually dominated by Byakuran-san."

Raising an eyebrow, I was suddenly very impressed with Shouichi. "So when you knew Byakuran was planning something in this world, you immediately acted because you know this was a leading world?"

"I think I might have acted in many other worlds as well, but they all failed because I didn't contact the Vongola Tenth."

"Tsuna?"

"Yes, since Tsuna-san is one of the active Trinisette holders, he can fight another Trinisette holder. I don't think this world is the only one where I met Tsuna-san, but I'm pretty sure this world is the only left that I have met Tsuna-san and hasn't been dominated by Byakuran-san yet."

"How do you know for sure?"

"Because I overheard Byakuran-san talking to another Brighteye like you, Alice-san, only with gold eyes."

"Golden eyes, huh? I think she was called Belle or something."

"Yes, Belle-san is the reason I know, since she was yelling really loudly that this was the last world to conquer before she's nearly finished… something. I couldn't figure out what."

"Ah, I should know. Please continue, Shouichi."

"And the box of diaries just confirmed my suspicion that there really were worlds out there that were dominated by Byakuran-san," he said. "Apparently, one day three years after you died a hole opened up in Jared-san's Varia room and you came through holding all those diaries."

Oh, this was getting interesting.

"Anyway, that Alice-san just told Jared-san to hold onto these and hide them in your, I mean, dead Alice-san's room because this world was the last hope and every single other Alice-san had failed her mission because Byakuran was waiting for you to go and beat him. Then she went back into the hole she came from, apparently holding her chopsticks in front of her. Jared presumed there was danger on the other side."

"So you already knew that I had a box of diaries?" I asked Shouichi dryly.

He laughed nervously. "Y-yes, but I wasn't sure if you knew of them from Jared-san yet, Alice-san."

"One question though, I never really did understand this. Why did ten-years-later Tsuna choose young Tsuna," I waved a hand to Tsuna who was fretting over the still unconscious Yamamoto, "to fight here? Tsuna, no matter how much he can grow, would still be weaker than ten-years-later Tsuna. This is a fact."

"Oh, I thought you knew, Alice-san!" Shouichi laughed, before a slight frown in his direction sent him quickly answering the question.

"I mean, Tsuna-san, I mean, Our Tsuna-san thought young Tsuna would be best to fight Byakuran because…" He trailed off.

"What?" I asked shortly, irritated that he stopped right before the info.

"I mean," he stuttered, "now that I've thought about it I don't know if it's appropriate…"

"Just say it."

Shouichi sighed. "Other than the fact that yes, this was the age where Tsuna-san can grow the fastest, the main fact was because you were still there next to him, Alice-san."

I paused. And blinked. Then smiled the most creepy smile I could muster because I had already had enough revelations in one day and I just _misheard what I just think I heard dammit._

"_What did you just say?"_ I asked as scarily as I could.

"Ah! I'm sorry, Alice-san! But Tsuna-san chose young Tsuna to come here was because this was the time you were still by his side without distancing yourself!"

And at that last sentence, he paused.

"Ah," he said softly, "I shouldn't have said that."

* * *

_Hmm… Belle twitched as she stared at the computer screen again. She was just a twitch of a finger away from the Brighteye webpage where all of the information on that Vongola Brighteye. A twitch._

_Just a twitch._

_Nothing harmful right?_

_She started chuckling before starting her 'twitch' before someone burst into her room._

"_Belle-sama!"_

_She frowned and stopped her would-be-twitch. She snapped. "What?" The background character cringed in a satisfactory way._

"_We have to search for the culprit who fought with Byakuran-sama's room!"_

"_No need, it was Rokudo Mukuro possessing Leonardo Lippi faking to be a person that," Belle sneered, "Byakuran-sama's dear _Sho-chan_ recommended." She sniffed. "Sho-chan indeed. Hmph."_

_The little Millefiore agent was watching all this, very scared at seeing one of the BIG people (yes, BIG – standing for The Very Top People That Ran The Mafia. One of the people who founded this acronym couldn't spell or count. The end) and seeing her rant about Captain Irie Shouichi, another BIG person._

_Inner feuding?_

_An overactive imagination took hold. _

_Maybe… they had a secret relationship! No, she sounded as if she was jealous over Byakuran calling Shouichi Sho-chan._

_He gasped._

_A love triangle?_

"_Stupid Sho-chan, Byakuran always gives him favours and I told Byakuran to stop but he didn't! And now what? Sure, stupid Sho-chan is his most trusted aide, but trusting him more than me?__"_

_That solidified it! Byakuran-sama had fallen in love with Captain Irie while two-timing with Belle-sama! Belle-sama was jealous, and told him not to trust him, but Byakuran-sama loved Captain Irie so much that…_

_Byakuran-sama was gay? But, the Millefiore soldier reasoned, even if he didn't do much to show that, his smile did seem a bit nicer to the men when Belle-sama was around…_

_(In actual fact, Byakuran was just trying to annoy Belle by showing he did not care for what she was ranting. Belle knew this. Oh, she knew it all too well…)_

_Belle snapped her head over to the Millefiore soldier. "What, you're still here?"_

_The Millefiore soldier sniffed at the romantic love story blooming in his mind. "Sorry! I will go now! Good luck!" And he ran away shoujo manga fashion, roses blooming around his tear-stricken face._

_Belle paid him no heed. There were weirdoes around everywhere. And what was the good luck for?_

_The love triangle would be common knowledge by dinner. Gossip, after all, was the deadliest disease of all to reputation…_

* * *

Shouichi had left me after I stared at him in contemplative silence for over four minutes, blabbering something about nice meeting you, and Spanner needing him now, and I was very interesting, etc…

Tsuna… Tsuna chose fourteen (no, he was fifteen now) year old Tsuna because I was here? What was with the 'distancing myself' bit?

I frowned. And there was that sentence that Shouichi had cut off. 'Lo'. Lout? Loud? Love? Lousy? What, there were too many words to choose from. Making a mental note to check up on that later, I lay down on the bed, with this time no random Shouichi-kuns running around giving loads of information.

I believe I fell asleep.

* * *

"_The real… real six Funeral Wreaths?" Tsuna and the others exclaimed. The hologram Byakuran only smiled playfully. _

"_Yup~"He said happily, "They are the real ones chosen by me for the new world. The real Mare Ring holders."_

"_How could that…" Tsuna trailed off, his thoughts in a muddle. He started again. "Then the ones we met so far…"_

"_Who are they!" Gokudera yelled, pointing at the screen behind the Byakuran hologram, showing six faces they've never seen before – presumably the real six Funeral Wreaths._

_Shouichi felt a drop of sweat trickling down his face as he started to panic. "I didn't know! I didn't know these people were in the Millefiore!"_

_Byakuran only calmly smiled. "That's because it would have been troublesome if I put too much pressure of you, Sho-chan. What I'm thinking is that, just choosing someone that strong is useless because the key factor of the Ring's power is a strong resolution."_

_Byakuran's face never changed as Tsuna's group tried to comprehend all this. "Because of that, I didn't just search within the Mafias, I looked all over the world for strong people with resolution surpassing normal peoples…"_

_Everyone was drawn in by his words, and the harsh example that he had given; the beautiful village that was destroyed in an instant by a magma-bathing monster that had five thousand men and one hundred A-ranking soldiers under them._

_And the only thing that was stopping them from annihilation was a simple game made by Sho-chan and Byakuran when they had still been friends. Choice._

"_Details will be informed ten days later, so I won't be moving during that. Please rest properly," his eyes flickered to the one person that hadn't woken up for his exchange for the Vongola. Alice slept soundly, thick bandages wrapping around her arm__,__ futilely trying to stop the bleeding. "It seems like you'll need it."_

"_Stop the useless talk," Reborn cut in, "when we've seen such a monster, how can we rest properly?"_

_Byakuran looked down for the first time. "Oh, you're the Arcobaleno Reborn." It seemed as if he wanted to say something, but he stopped himself with another calm smile. "Oh, I really wanted to talk to you more," he said wistfully even while his eyes flickered towards the back where the infirmary beds were, "but you all can't escape."_

"_Huh?" Tsuna said eloquently. Byakuran chuckled accordingly, his eyes a deep crinkle. Tsuna really was interesting, opening his eyes a little. Such a small innocent boy the only blockage to his universal domination?_

_Interesting._

"_The Mellone Base is going to disappear." In response to the collective response from the others, Byakuran confirmed it. "Well, to be accurate it's because of the Super Ring Transmission System is moving."_

_Spanner's engineer sense kicked in. "Which means the teleport system using ring Flames is completed?"_

_Byakuran gave a vague answer (pertaining to how it would most probably not be used more than once in a lifetime with that perma-smile of his) and waved a simple goodbye. "See you ten days later."_

_Then the whole base started to glow, and Tsuna listened in panic as they said to catch on to something._

"_Alice! She's still on the bed!" Squinting against the light, he ran forward, trying to drag her out of the bed (she was surprisingly heavy) and get something to catch on to. There wasn't anything._

"_Juudaime! Please catch onto my foot!" Gokudera reached out his foot, from where he had dragged Yamamoto's bed to a safer place, and Tsuna grabbed his leg (knowing shoes slip off all too easily). _

_In the end, all the beds had fallen into the black pit that had been the Mellone Base. Tsuna looked down at the hole in horror. "The-The Mellone Base is gone!" Then he looked at Alice, who was _still _sleeping soundly, leaning on him and smiled a bit in relief._

"…_But how did we get left here if it's so strong?" Tsuna asked, relieved yet curious. The answer was from a disturbingly familiar shout._

"_WHERE IS THIS PLACE, TO THE EXTREEEMEEE!"_

* * *

I woke up in the infirmary with an IV in my arm (hate needles) and a strange grey box next to my hand. Feeling a bit strange but fine, I picked it up after getting the bed to a sitting position and looked at it.

It had the words VONGOLA on it, fancy with little star designs that I actually liked, and the weird shifting dark and light grey of my flame.

Safe to say, it was my Vongola box.

Strange. I didn't expect to get one.

After touching it a bit (hey, it was my own box. Jared never actually gave me my boxes in the end. I had the sneaking suspicion that he didn't give them to me on purpose…), I carefully took them out and tested my legs.

Standing up and slipping on some random clean clothes on the bedside table, I put my Vongola Box and Ring in a real pocket, strapping the guns under my fake pocket and randomly sticking my chopsticks in the simplest hair-do I could manage.

My spare pair of chopsticks was put in another pocket and off I went, walking happily around the base hoping to bump into someone.

If I was here, then it should be the ten days of rest, etcetera. Question was, which day was it?

I wandered around, when I met one bouncing I-pin going up to a door. She smiled brightly when she saw me.

"Alice-nee!" (In Chinese)

"I-pin!" I gave her a little hug, before letting her go and looking at her seriously. "What are you doing?"

"Chrome-san eat meat bun," she said in broken Japanese and I grinned.

"Ah, is that Chrome's room?" I-pin's egg head nodded and I smiled. "Then go, I'll sit outside okay?"

She smiled at me and opened the door, while I slid and sat next to the door. When I heard Chrome's quiet voice replying to I-pin, I smiled and walked slowly away.

And straight into Giannini leading Reborn, Tsuna, Yamamoto, Ryohei and Gokudera to… somewhere.

"Alice, you're up!"

"Yo, Bright!"

"Freaky-eyes…"

I grinned.

"Hey, what are you all doing?"

Giannini smiled.

"Perfect! You've woken up at the perfect moment, Alice-san! I was just showing the Vongola Juudaime my special rooms."

Giannini had already whipped out a tape measure by the time I reached them, and I stared curiously at it even as Yamamoto clapped me on the back with a wide grin and Ryohei grinned madly at _something_ blabbering about 'working hard for future maybe girlfriends' and 'by the way want to join the boxing club' Gokudera kind of ignoring me in favour for staring at Giannini measure Tsuna's leg.

Tsuna himself gave me full blown smile, and it made me smile too, strangely enough. Giannini muttered something about excusing rudeness even as I looked away from his face and gave him a hair ruffle.

Maybe it was true after all, those rumours on sky holders having smiles that could warm hearts…

"As I thought," Giannini sighed even as Reborn's face held a smirk that could rival all smirks (he had obviously seen the result from Giannini's tape measurer), "Your legs… are short."

Even as I started laughing loudly, Tsuna gave his 'ah-did-he-really-say-that-out-loud' face while Gokudera seethed. Literally. He was only held back by an overly happy Ryohei and a Yamamoto who had an 'oh really?' face going on.

Reborn hopped on my shoulder, and I straightened out and tried to stop laughing.

"Sorry, Tsuna," I said even as I chuckled, "I haven't laughed for a while there and your _face…"_

"You dare laugh at Juudaime, you freaky-eyed bastard!" Gokudera yelled at me, now being restrained by both Yamamoto and Ryohei.

"Ah," Tsuna said even as he drooped, "it's okay, I knew…"

Okay, now I felt bad.

Giannini by that time had run off muttering (no-one had really been listening to him) and Tsuna wheeled on Reborn. "I don't get any of this, Reborn! Why are we here anyway?"

Reborn continued smirking on my shoulder, only his smirk became a bit gentler. "Giannini's the type of guy to get things done a day early."

"Wha-?"

"To win against Byakuran," Reborn said clearly "we need more that boxes and rings." I looked at him speculatively. If he said that… had Reborn already heard of the Choice battle from Shouichi?

Tsuna's response to Reborn's cryptic answer was interrupted by where Giannini had gone.

A loud noise, like some motorbike revving to go came from where Giannini had bundled up to. Tsuna immediately clapped his hands over his ears, since he had sensitive ears.

"My eardrums are going to blow!" He screamed, and I only just heard him through the noise. Gokudera, unsurprisingly, wasn't affected much and he went to help Tsuna when Giannini's voice clearly cut through the noise.

"Wonderful!" Giannini's voice somehow wafted through the noise, "the gasoline fuel and the responses… it's good to go like this!"

And out came one Giannini, who, no offense, did not seem like he belonged on the ultra cool-looking (even I had to admit that) motorbike he was riding.

I wanted to whistle.

Wow. And Tsuna and the others got to fight on these?

* * *

_Once upon a time in a far away land lived a beautiful girl called Tsuna-fish._

_No. Just kidding. His name was Tsunayoshi, and he was the cutest and most wonderful girl in the country. His father would differ and say that his dear Tsuna was the prettiest most gentle girl in the whole world! Dear Tsuna's suitors would differ even that and say that Tsuna was the most gorgeous girl in the whole universe!_

_Why yes, you must be wondering why I am bombarding you with beautiful imagery of the lovely Tsuna. But the point is, dear reader, Tsuna was a very beautiful, let's hear the drum roll please,_

_Man._

_Yes, he was beautiful, even he had to admit he took after his mother, but yes, he indeed was a man._

_Now if only his stupid suitors would get the point that he just wasn't interested, and the dear lovely princess of the Sun country would think of him as more than a participant for the weekly 'princesses-GIRLS night in' and love him back._

_Of course, getting the invitation for a girl's sleepover from his love-of-his-life and the light-of-his-world (he had heard calling girls names like that would make the fall in love with him) already indicated something he didn't really want to think about._

_Anyway, dear Tsunayoshi-chan… I mean, dear Tsunayoshi-kun went out in the forest one day to escape the Prince of the Storm country because he was just stalking him and he wasn't interested._

_Really really uninterested. If only he would just get the point and marry the Princess of the Rain country __already__. They looked lovely together. The __reason for__ the Storm Prince refusing the Princess of the Rain however__,__ (because everyone knew – even the Storm Prince – they loved one another) was that the Rain Princess was taller than the Storm Prince._

_And calmer. And more charismatic. And had a sense of humour. And more well loved (though the Storm Prince's followers loved him, the Rain Princess was _adored_. It was mainly because she aced both of their nation's sports). And, and, and… he hated to admit it, but she was manlier._

_And also because the Rain Princess had a very dangerous sharkey brother that wanted to kill the Storm Prince whenever he hit __her__. On the head. In a futile attempt to make her shorter so they could finally marry._

_(She had the gall to ask that why doesn't she just __wear __the suit, and the Storm Prince __wear __the dress. Really. Even if the Storm Prince was more… delicate, it didn't mean a dress. He would explode the place if he did that. Really, no kidding.)_

_Anyway, Tsunayoshi was running away from the Storm Prince. They were good friends, when the Storm Prince wasn't trying to sneak a wedding ring on his finger. He should stop being in denial._

_Then he would be a very good friend._

_But anyway, half-way to the weekly princess's sleepover, he met yet another dangerous opponent._

_The Cloud Prince. _

_You meet him_

_You run._

_Strangely enough, he was loved for his looks. Whenever he was around, you could see some random flash at least somewhere from fan-girls holding binoculars drooling at him. _

_He was currently chasing the legendary very elusive Star Princess who also went to the princess's sleepover. _

_He didn't realise he liked her. She was equally as oblivious to his feelings._

_They had gotten nowhere._

_Figuratively. Literally. Vertically. Horizontally. In every way possible._

_(But that was what was stopping her from being mauled to death, no matter how legendary and elusive she was, by the Prince of Cloud's fan girls. For fan clubs have the ultimate information networks no matter what people say…)_

_So when Tsuna met the Cloud Prince, he went with protocol and ran. When he got to the tower where the sleepover was, the Star Princess opened the doors._

"_Hey, Sky Princess… I mean, Prince."_

_He smiled at her monotone, forgiving her. At least she tried to change. His mother enjoyed having him as a dress-up doll too much for her to change._

"_Hey, how're you?" He said conversationally. She laughed, and he realised his ears had turned red from the sound. Like last week. And last last week. And last last last week._

_Scratch that. Since last year._

_Why? He had been getting these weird feelings for a while now. They said it was just puberty, and when he asked the Rain Princess (who was just legendary at things like this) she said:_

_What? Of course it's love! I mean, I feel that whenever I play baseball!_

_So…_

_Love?_

_OH NO, I WAS TWO-TIMING KYOKO-CHAN_

_The next was_

_OH NO, HIBARI-SAN WOULD KILL ME_

_The next was_

_OH ##$ #%$%$% &%$% $#_

_In his own secret code of course._

_The Star Princess, in her trademark obliviousness, just continued up the stairs, used to Tsuna's periodic spasms whenever he thought of something. She was joined with another oblivious person (the bright Sun Princess herself), and the two queens of obliviousness went up the stairs together._

_Tsuna had really bad luck._

_That was all he could say._

* * *

**Poor Tsunayoshi-chan!**

**...Kun. **

**But anyway! XD There are some revelations AND I CAN'T BELIVE NO-ONE GUESSED ALICE'S BOX WEAPON! If you want to know it, I dropped such a huge hint, IN THE LAMBO EXTRA : A COW IN A FIELD OF CLAMS!**

**In some random chapter. Let me check... chapter 22. Now let's see who tells me they have it. Ohohoho, of course there's going to be another surprise even if you guess it (I just love plot twisty things... And if not plot twisty, original ideas. muahahaha)**

**Anyway, thank you for reading this story! I was so happy when I heard people understood, (really really happy) so thank you for telling me your thoughts! Please tell me what you thought of this one, and the extra because I secretly love Gokudera's thoughts on Yamamoto in it. XD See you soon! Hopefully. School is starting (urgh). Senior years. (gah)**


	36. Pressure upon Pressure

**Yo! Two weeks… not too bad! Ahahahaha… ^^ I originally wanted to make this go into the choice battle, but decided next chapter. But, AH SENIOR YEARS! The HOMEWORK! **

**But have no fear! I will prevail in, at least, two weeks a chapter in this story, (and maybe my other one as well… hmmm…)**

**I was really happy from all your reviews! Please review and tell me whatcha think of Alice having inner debates. And this isn't the start of it yet… Why so sudden? That is for you to guess. Please tell me how you think about this!**

* * *

Even though I felt kind of upbeat after waking up, I didn't really bother staying up with Tsuna even when he was trying to master his motor biking skills. I just read the handbook, tried to understand all the weird blinking things, learnt how to turn, accelerate, brake (in a normal fashion, as I wasn't suicidal like Ryohei) and got off, nodded at Reborn and left.

It wasn't that I was feeling anti-social or anything. It was just that I was having a hard time processing all the things that was given to me at once.

When I woke up, all those things had been momentarily forgotten. Now that I had woken up, I felt my shoulders were especially heavy with all the things that had sprung up on me unexpectedly.

First things first.

Shouichi and the diaries. Basically, the diaries came from an alternate dimension Alice to tell me that I was probably their last hope. Lovely. No stress at all.

Second: Belle and Byakuran and Choice and Tsuna's murder

Okay, Belle was going to try and kill Tsuna in the Choice battle, but I can't do that to Byakuran, so I'll have to protect Tsuna on the field which is impossible because I can't go into the battle _because_ it'll ruin the plot.

But was I really okay with protecting Tsuna?

Either way, one of us would have to give up on our mission… I pushed it to the back of my mind as I had done with my first life family. These things can't be thought about, because what was I doing this for? Fuzzy memories of two younger siblings and a mom, a dad, and a grandma. There was no choice to doubt.

I wish I could talk to one of the other Brighteyes. Liza, although she would have passed on by now. I'll tell her everything, and she'll put on her bubbly happy persona and tell me what to do. Then I'll have one of those anime epiphanies that's actually good (and isn't something confusing and stressing like Shouichi or Bill) and I'll know what to do.

…Who was I kidding? This was an anime, but this was a real world. Things like that happened to main characters, like Tsuna. I was a side-character, like always.

This led to the main thing. The third pressing thing.

Should I, or shouldn't I get attached to these people?

Their faces flashed in my mind. Yamamoto's easy-going smile with his milk obsession. Gokudera and his touch-Juudaime-and-I'll-castrate-you-even-if-you're-a-girl face. Tsuna with his self-deprecating smile and resignation (I mean, happiness-in-denial) from having friends such as these. Lambo and his sudden obedience, I-pin with her happy personality, Hibari and his 'hn' language.

They were people. Strange people, of course, people that I wouldn't have met in my first life-time, and never would have wanted to socialise with. But the point was that they were _people_.

Repetitious, but it had starting worming into my brain only a little while ago. I had thought of them as characters at the start (unhealthy, I know, thinking that you're the only real human in a world full of characters) and when I reached the fated middle school it was more with a determination to finish my mission that I approached Tsuna.

No messing with the plot. Right?

And then Reborn came in all his Fedora glory, Gokudera dragged Yamamoto who literally dragged me and we became 'the cool group with Dame-Tsuna'.

But I still only thought of one thing. Protect Tsuna, and don't mess with the plot.

Then Mukuro came, and a closeness to Kyoko and Hana that I wouldn't have realised. The toilet incident where Kyoko became human and I tried to understand a non-main character for the first time. And for some dreaded, unknown reason, when one character becomes human, everyone else has to become human too.

Mukuro was a person trying to get rid of injustice; Ken and Chikusa were just intensely loyal to their saviour from childhood torture. Hibari became a person that couldn't bear defeat, Tsuna became a person who had just been beaten down too much, and wanted to keep his only friends close to his side. Yamamoto was a nice-easy going guy as a by-product of stress but loved baseball. Gokudera was a softie who loved explosions and Tsuna a lot, a person who, just like his beloved Juudaime, also wanted to keep his only friends by his side.

And when the Varia came, it became horrifyingly clear they were people. And maybe I wasn't one.

What makes a human a human? I can't bleed to death, I can't be stabbed to death, I can't die at all except at the specified time that I died in my first life. I had already died once, my mind is stuck in a body too young for it, and my emotions had been stunted for years from the teachings –finish the mission– and –don't get close–.

And they became human and I suddenly become… something else.

By the end of the Varia arc, I was confused. So I pushed it all to the nice happy place at the back of my head where I locked my first family in, and ran away from it saying I had to focus on Byakuran.

Then I came into the future, and saw first-hand just how human the group was. Haru smiling until she couldn't take it anymore and curling under the stairs to cry. Kyoko in the kitchen chopping up vegetables so that she could at least contribute to a cause she wasn't even sure of.

Tsuna's depression on how it was his fault we were all here and his stress to get us back. Gokudera seeing Tsuna un-spirited and training hard. Yamamoto, trying to make everything happier through his non-stop smile.

Me? I just sat there, staring at them and wondering why I couldn't feel as much as they seemed to feel.

Maybe it's because I knew what was going to happen. Yeah, that was it.

Yes… Because I was part of the Family, and I contributed something, right?

Right?

Because really, I didn't know anymore.

From keeping away to wanting to become close, from scowling to smiling, from listening to all the warnings of getting close to questioning them then abandoning them... From characters to humans, to maybe friends…

It was too much.

All too much…

* * *

"_Haha!" Yamamoto laughed as he clapped Tsuna on the back as they went back to their own rooms after their motorbike training session. Tsuna smiled happily, even with Gokudera on the side grinning at him before yelling at Ryohei to stop yelling._

"_Thank you, guys!" Tsuna exclaimed, turning around and smiling at them. "You didn't have to do that for me, you know…"_

"_What do you mean, Juudaime?" Gokudera immediately said. "We did it because we were happy to!"_

_Tsuna blinked, before smiling feeling warm. How did he get such wonderful friends?_

_They walked down the corridor together, Ryohei's boisterous laugh echoing down the halls until a punch to the head told him to keep it down or they'll wake up the girls. Yamamoto just laughed to his left and Gokudera with Ryohei __to __his right._

_But something felt off. Something was missing next to Yamamoto, a silent blank-faced figure. But, Tsuna smiled, they would meet tomorrow. She was probably tired after all._

_The fight was after a few days after all. But, Tsuna thought as he looked around, they could make it._

_Because he had all his friends by his side._

* * *

I sat in the meeting room with the others for the first time. Strangely enough, Reborn didn't exclude me this time; apparently this was important enough that even if he knew I would know what the meeting was about, he still called me.

"You're all able to ride the motorbikes, more or less," Reborn said to the group, "So it's time to move to the next stage."

"That means…" Tsuna said his eyes wide.

"Is it finally time, Reborn-san?" Gokudera excitedly asked Reborn. Ryohei only looked confused.

"What's the next stage?"

"You all have those, right?" Yamamoto took the cue and smiled.

"Yeah, I still got mine." He took out his Vongola box from the inside pocket of his jacket and put it on the table. Chrome followed suit silently, taking out her indigo box. Ryohei took out his own box, muttering something in understanding.

"Starting tomorrow, you'll be training to use those boxes."

I phased out a little around there, staring at them. I think it disconcerted Tsuna a little, since he fidgeted and glanced at me. I averted my eyes down to the table.

Oh yes, my eyes were yet another thing that wasn't human, wasn't it? I forgot sometimes, although it was such a large bother in my life before Tsuna and the others…

It was only when Yamamoto asked me a question that I looked up. "I wonder what Alice's and Tsuna's boxes would be!" He laughed. I looked at him questioningly even as Tsuna looked at him.

"Huh, animal?"

Yamamoto smiled and nodded. "Yeah. Mine's a sparrow, remember? Gokudera's a cat, and Sasagawa-sempai's is a kangaroo. And Hibari's a hedgehog. We've seen all of them except for the two of you because you two had already–"

Gokudera cut him off. "Don't say that to Juudaime, you baseball-freak."

"Ahaha, sorry! But still, I'm curious to what your box animal is."

"That's right," Tsuna said contemplatively, glossing over Yamamoto's nearly slip. "Box weapons are either weapons or modelled after animals. I wonder what type this is…"

"Whatever it is, I'm sure your box is truly amazing!" Gokudera exclaimed, gushing over Tsuna. Sitting across from Reborn, I stared at my own box, feeling it in my hands. The words VONGOLA weren't as prominent on mine as the others. I nearly snorted.

Fitting.

I stood up as Yamamoto was saying 'I can't wait to see what's in ours,'

"Are you finished Reborn?"

He looked up at me from beneath his fedora, his eyes speculating. Was he reading my mind?

"Pretty much. You want to leave?" He squeaked out.

I nodded in response, and after one last glance at the whole room I left. I felt kind of sorry to Yamamoto for cutting him off, but I couldn't stand sitting in the room anymore. It felt suffocating, as all the people around me had these hopeful looks on their faces. I didn't want to drag them down.

My problems were mine own, and therefore mine to figure out.

Those stupid flies in my mind wouldn't stop buzzing, asking me if I really could figure it out all by myself.

I slammed them into that happy box in the back of my mind as well.

Then I paused outside the door, before heading to the infirmary so that I could get my bandages changed.

There wasn't anyone in there, thank goodness, so I took my time meandering around and finding the bandages, taking stuff off, wrapping new bandages, and just when I was finished there was a huge explosion. Just like anyone else, I ran towards where the explosion came from.

Dust was coming from cracks, and I ran past Bianchi's group with a wave and a nod, with Kyoko and Haru calling at me to come with them. I shook my head and continued running awkwardly, as my back stretched with a dull painful heartbeat.

But when I reached the place, the matter was already done.

"The Rain swallow," Yamamoto said faintly through the wall, "Rondine di Pioggia."

I stopped just shy of the doorway, watching as flecks of Rain and Sky class flames flickered and died when they flew through the door.

"Yamamoto-dono!" Basil said happily, and I could see Yamamoto's smile.

"You aren't the only Rain class here."

And I only stood there, not moving to go through to the rest. Why did I run here? I couldn't do anything. It was like the wall in between us was…

"Thanks for the help," Basil said to Yamamoto, still with that happy tone.

"A display of teamwork, right? If one can't make it work, two can make it work." Yamamoto said so naturally, and I jolted and shook my head.

Of course, I was here for teamwork. Yes, teamwork.

I walked through the doors and looked at them as they ran towards a drenched Tsuna. I stared at them with mixed feelings and I felt like I wanted to scream but bashed my head against the wall instead, a bit harder than usual.

This was all too much for a person to bear.

Then I walked out the room, ignoring a familiar voice shouting 'Alice!' and going through a few corridors. Then opening a random door and stepping through. Quick check with the blueprints told me that it was an unused bedroom, and I dragged a slightly off-white blanket off the bed and draped it over my head.

Here, it was quiet.

Just me and silence…

But the noisy flies in my head continued whisper, murmuring things in my head that I didn't want to hear.

* * *

_Dino looked down the corridor at a shadow that had looked like his long lost, grey-haired friend but found he couldn't remember what the shadow was after a while. He only remembered it was important. _

_A high level of important, if he had wanted to jump off his horse and hug the weird shadow as if greeting a little sister…_

_He shrugged. He forgot stuff all the time. Nudging his stirrups a little, he trotted through the door on his Sky horse and took in the situation._

"_No, that was Tsuna's fault," he answered Gokudera's accusation on Irie. "If you keep opening your box like that, it would no longer be usable."_

_His cute little brother stared at him with innocent eyes with that hidden spark in them he hadn't seen for the past six years since Alice had died. It made him smile, slightly nostalgically._

"_Dino-san?" He asked, Tsuna's voice much much, _much_ higher than what he was used to. Dino suddenly wanted to laugh, but nodded and smiled coolly instead (he knew it was cool, because he had asked Romario if it looked cool nine times __already__)._

"_How are you doing, little bro?"_

_Tsuna smiled happily, even ecstatically, and waved. Dino, his sometimes-reliable older brother was here!_

"_Whoa," Yamamoto said, impressed, "he's riding a horse."_

* * *

There were these huge thumping footsteps, and I peered out the door with the blanket still on my head to see Ryohei in a boxing pose confronting a huge, sky-flamed… turtle?

Ah, that turtle that heals all your injuries when it eats you and makes you feel refreshed… or something.

"_Go, turf-top!"_ some mini-speakers said, sounding suspiciously like Gokudera.

"_Go onii-san!" _Tsuna exclaimed through the same tinny voice. I wondered where it came from… I looked around sleepily as Ryohei yelled 'BRING IT ON!' and suddenly… an arrgh, and he disappeared when I looked backwards.

And then there was this weird, not-wet tongue wrapped around me before I knew it, and I was eaten to the sound of Reborn's tinny voice saying '_ah, that's bad. Alice might have told us what it was…'_

And woke up a second later feeling remarkable refreshed. I twisted around. Oh hey, strangely enough all my wounds were gone. I clenched my fists experimentally. Even the stiffness in my hands were gone.

As I sat up, the white sphere thing that was holding me inside cracked in half perfectly, and I stared out to see a surprised Tsuna and Basil. I yawned, before tugging the blanket sheet over my head again.

I was in no mood to party.

* * *

The next day, we were all called to the training room. I had been carried to my room last night, so my head was still wrapped in that kind of off-white blanket thing from yesterday. Unwrapping my head felt a bit weird and I sorely needed a shower. So I took a shower first, before slowly walking towards the 'Vongola Box Training room', as Dino had dubbed it in the note he had left on the huge piles of paper on my desk.

Surprisingly enough, I was the first there. Dino was already standing there, murmuring to Romario about what seemed like the situation in Italy with his family. I smiled tiredly.

So even Dino became responsible and mature after ten years, eh?

The two sharply looked up when the door opened, only to relax when they saw me, though the two had very different reactions.

Romario just smiled and nodded in a way that you knew he was happy to see you, with a bit of nostalgia and sadness in his expression that was understandable. Dino however saw me, relaxed and then ran full tilt towards me with this kiddy happy expression that told me he had just abandoned all the maturity I had been impressed with a second before.

"Alice!" He blubbered, and my face was somehow stuck in his overly furry collar. "I haven't seen you for such a long time! Kyoya didn't do anything to you, did he? Are you okay? You adapting well? If you need anyone to talk to, your good, old, dependable big brother is here! Anything you want to say?"

I squinted and pushed back at him.

"Yes," I said drily. "Your hairdo is weird."

And at that, he laughed so much that it made me want to laugh. Romario was already chuckling at the back anyway. I smiled a bit, before looking at Dino.

"Well, I know we're here for tutors, so do I have to wait for the others to come?"

Dino shook his head and smiled in a 'cool' way, and I knew immediately that it was practiced. Poor Romario, I bet he was subject to these practicings… Dino had always been a person in mind of his appearances…

"Actually, no. Alice, you don't need a tutor." He smiled, and I stared up at him seriously.

"Why? I need to improve as well."

"Your fighting style is unique in the way that not many people can combat it from experience because," he laughed, "not many people fight with chopsticks. You should be a better fighter than Tsuna and the others anyway, with the exception of Yamamoto, since they all fight with instinct, which isn't exactly bad. But still, you've trained longer than them. In general, you're better."

"What about my guns? I'm still an amateur."

"We couldn't find a short term gun instructor for you in shut a short time. Before, we thought it would be Lal, but she's out of commission right now."

I thought to ask about Grey, before stopping. They would've talked about him if he was available. Most probably he had already passed away though. It has been ten years, and he had been old.

"What about opening a box weapon?"

"No-one can really teach you that but a Brighteye, and all of them are refusing contact. You're alone on this, but it's okay!" He smiled a warm smile, before clapping me on the back and telling me where to go. I didn't have to wait for the others.

And a little voice in my ear whispered yet again that I was different…

* * *

Passing the kitchen, Haru and Kyoko were up early. Dino and Romario had followed me out of the training room, wanting to go to some place to contact his men in Italy, when I saw Kyoko and Haru sighing together.

"What's wrong?" I asked as I went to get an orange from the fruit bowl. They looked up at me.

"Alice-chan, we know you know what the guys are keeping from us, so could you tell us?" Kyoko asked me.

I blinked, before something canon floated up from my muddle of thoughts.

"Ah, I can't say." They both drooped, and I started peeling the orange. "But I can say that there isn't anyone in the training room right now, and there are two motorbikes parked next to the entrance where two people can hide. And I strongly discourage eavesdropping, but if someone does, they have to be quiet and be prepared for a long wait."

They both perked up at that and rushed to the door.

"Thank you, Alice-chan!" Kyoko said as she left.

"Yes, thank you, Alice-san!" Haru said to me as she waved and winked. I just blinked.

"I didn't say anything."

They both laughed, and I ate my orange feeling at least a little accomplished. Sitting down with my plate of orange (I used too much strength and orange juice had squirted everywhere, damn it), I took out my Vongola box.

It was quiet in the empty kitchen, and it was there that I slowly calmed myself, drove away all the stupid thoughts in my head and emptied my mind. Then I drew out a thin thread of my flame slowly, and fed it through the Vongola box's hole.

When the box opened, I stopped feeding it flames and, as I expected, it wasn't like the other's boxes where they had to keep feeding flames. I guess it should be like my flame, which could last about five hours.

Then I opened my eyes, and genuinely smiled.

"Hello," I said simply to the intense yellow eyes that were staring back at mine, and I ran both my hands through the feathers. There were two loud bird screeches in response to my greeting and I nearly laughed, before continuing stroking.

"Beautiful," I said aloud because the feathers really were beautiful. The eyes blinked happily in response.

All in all, I was very happy with my box weapon.

Walking down the corridors, I tried to figure out what it could do by communicating. Although it didn't seem to work (hard as it is to talk to a bird) we seemed to get along very well. Not as passionately close as Ryohei's, or with grudging friendship like Gokudera and Uri.

Not even Yamamoto's box weapon's loyal relationship with each other. I sensed intelligence in those eyes, and respected it. And it, I guess, saw me as its summoner and had a respect for me.

We were colleagues. And it was something that I could spill my guts to, and so I did and the box weapon just listened and tried not to prick holes in my arms.

* * *

"Boycott?" I asked Kyoko and Haru.

"Yup!" They nodded as they painted their signs. "We know that Bianchi, Chrome and you won't tell us anything, but we're not angry at you all." Haru said.

"Yes, we know you three think of us as people that fight with you," Kyoko continued. "But we don't think the boys understand it yet. We're strong too!"

"Yeah!" Haru cheered, as she taped a stick onto the board. "And we want to know what's happening, from the boys so that we can kill two birds with one stone. They can realise that we aren't as weak as they think we are, and also know what they are fighting for so we can support them the best we can!"

I blinked at their thoughtfulness. I never really thought about it that way before.

"That's wonderful," I said blankly. Kyoko and Haru just looked at me and laughed.

"Come on, Alice-chan," Kyoko said as she smiled up at me, "smile a little! Are you hungry? We have some omelette left over if you want it."

And hearing of the omelette, I patted my stomach. "Yeah, I think I'm hungry."

Then I met Chrome for the third time. I blinked and then patted Chrome's shoulder. She smiled softly.

"Alice-san," Chrome said to me, bowing slightly. I was mildly surprised at the formality. Kyoko and Haru looked up, surprised.

"You two know each other, Chrome-chan, Alice-chan?" They asked, and Chrome timidly nodded.

"Alice-san was the one who brought me to Ken and Chikusa and closer to Mukuro-sama as well as giving me my name. I feel eternally grateful for her help…"

I widened my eyes. Really? I coughed to hide my embarrassment. "Uh, it's okay Chrome. That's what friends do, right?"

Kyoko and Haru, although not really knowing what was going on, smiled encouragingly and Chrome also smiled timidly. "Yeah…"

I patted her shoulder again, before looking for a plate and loading an omelette on my plate and munching in. Kyoko picked up the sign that she made. "Okay then! Let's go, Haru-chan!"

"Yes, Kyoko-chan!" They walked forward determinedly before they stopped and turned sheepishly.

"Um, do you know where they are right now?"

Mentally chuckling, I mumbled that they were probably near the C sector third corridor and the two of them, bowed and thanked me before going through the door and meeting Bianchi.

"I was standing outside all this time, and I'm proud of you girls," Bianchi said to them both. "Go ahead, I'll support you."

"Bianchi-san," Haru breathed, before squaring her shoulders and marching on. "Let's go, Kyoko-chan!"

"Mm!"

And that left me and Chrome behind, Chrome timidly drying her hair with a towel, before greeting I-pin with a bigger smile than most when she bounded up with a little mini towel for herself. I-pin immediately made herself at home in Chrome's arms, and I smiled and bopped her braid, in which she responded Chrome had done it for her. We then left the kitchen, just in time to see Bianchi hugging both Kyoko and Haru saying she would support them.

"Me too," Chrome said softly, walking forward with me flanked behind her. "I'm sorry, boss."

"Chrome!" Tsuna exclaimed in surprise. "Alice! Are you in this too?"

I shrugged, not really meeting their eyes because I didn't know what to feel about them. Not yet. Talking about it to my box weapon had let the pressure drop a little, but it was still there, and I knew that it could rise anytime.

"Sorry Tsuna. I can't cook, and I am obviously in the female sector of the human race."

He blinked at me disbelievingly, when I-pin suddenly waved her arms around. "I-pin too!"

This time he visibly took a step back. "W-what? No way! What's with you all?"

"Taking a stand for equity and human rights," I muttered to myself, and Yamamoto laughed at that.

"What, that sounds like our geography class, Alice!"

I muttered something else even softer so that even Yamamoto couldn't hear.

"C-could you reconsider, Kyoko?" Ryohei beseeched Kyoko with a disbelieving look on his face. Kyoko's face told us (the females) that she nearly gave in until Haru nudged her on the elbow. It was nearly instantaneous, which meant they had planned for this situation too.

"This is the one time I can't listen to you!" Kyoko exclaimed instead. We all shot her 'good job' looks.

"We all stand united against you!"

And then Reborn, Giannini and Fuuta came in drag, and I took it as my cue to leave. I didn't want my memory getting _those_ type of images burnt into my brain.

Argh, even imagining Giannini in a dress was kind of disturbing.

* * *

Next thing I did was close myself off in my room, and write down all my thoughts and feelings. What I felt about the group, my doubts and my feelings over what I was and what I was supposed to do. I let my box weapon out, before breathing in, and out, in, and out until I was calm.

I had to remove the pressure; even the tiniest smidgen would be good; so I could face Tsuna and the others again. They would be starting to suspect me, or soon. I had to get my act together.

I couldn't break before the Choice game. Even with all my doubts, I still had my mission. Even _if _I do feel bad about tricking Tsuna, making him think that I was protecting him because I cared and not because of my mission, I still had to protect him.

Even though this. Even though that. If, if, if. Maybe…

I cast that all away as best as I could, shoved it in the back of my mind, hoping the box wouldn't break anytime soon. It only had to last for a few more days. A few more days, and maybe I could go and disappear on them and protecting Tsuna from afar as I was supposed to.

But one more thing I had to clear up.

I walked into the kitchen silently, looking at my slightly warped reflection in the smooth iron that protected the wall from steam. Yellow eyes glared at me, eyes that were inhuman, eyes that matched my box weapon… an animal.

Kyoko was standing there, humming a song even as she looked worriedly at the clock.

And I stepped forward, my face serious.

"Kyoko…" I started.

Kyoko smiled and turned around, before seeing my face and frowned slightly even as she kept smiling and started untying her apron.

"Hmm?" She asked with her eyes warm and understanding. Like the mother I haven't had for seven years.

Things wanted to burst out my throat. I wanted to tell her everything but knew it would be a burden too heavy for her to bear, especially how I have seen her stressed, pretending everything was okay. But one thing came out.

"Am I human?" I asked softer than normal, so soft that my voice cracked halfway in the middle.

Kyoko's eyes widened, before taking two big steps towards me and giving me a hug.

"Of course you are."


	37. Answering the Questions

**Bwaha, a week chappie and it's long. Dies. My language is formaller than before. Sorry, I think it's because I stared at essays all day... ==' **

**Please enjoooooy**

* * *

Reborn blinked up at me.

"Although I can't read your thoughts as clearly as the others, you're depressed. Why?"

I only stared back at him, not saying anything. Reborn only sighed and tilted his fedora. "You don't need to face the others right now; I'll tell them you have intense training."

I nodded, and he nodded back before walking out of my room. Locking the door, I picked up my chopsticks and practiced jabbing with them again.

My guns weren't flame friendly, but that made me realise why Jack had specially made these chopsticks. They sustained the flame well, and when I jabbed at my pillow, it went through like butter and nearly went through the mattress. Which gave me a weapon I didn't need, since I wasn't going to be in the Choice battle anyway, but maybe this would help Tsuna and the others protect Uni…

Should I do some training? I hadn't run for a while.

I sneaked out of the room and followed my blueprints to where there was a small gym. Going to one of the random treadmills, I jogged as I thought and thought.

There were six days until the Choice game, and six days I had to get myself together. Yamamoto had been kidnapped accordingly, Dino had gone to Hibari, and everyone had already started training seriously. But before I do that, I had to myself out of this… spiral down to depression. I knew there was something wrong. Even if I knew I was pessimistic, I have never sunk this far.

Why? Why, I had to know why. I was a why person. I closed my eyes and thought, what was so different this time? Then something clicked, as I thought about Tsuna and _his_ stress.

I opened my eyes in realisation. Maybe it was because this was the first time I had no-one to lean on. In the past, even if I was loaded with problems, I knew that a call away would be Jack, or Liza, or someone that knew about me, and could sympathise.

Now, I couldn't contact the Brighteyes, and surrounded by people that woulnd't be able to understand my problems even if I told them. It was so much easier to cope when there was someone I knew would always be there to support me. Even if I didn't tell them, they would still be there whenever I got into trouble.

They weren't there anymore.

I thought about Kyoko's hug, and wondered when the last time I got comfort from a hug.

Nine years ago? By my mother. In my first life.

So long ago…

I continued jogging, trying to remember what it felt like to be in a family of your own, without secrets, without mystery, only to find they were nearly too blurry to remember.

* * *

"_Kyo-san," Kusakabe respectfully said with his ever present piece of grass in between his teeth. Hibari glanced his way__.__ "__Aren't__ you going to read the letter your future self-wrote for you?"_

_The sun hid behind a cloud as Hibari idly took out the rice paper out of his pocket, a wind blowing across the roof. To Kusakabe's horror, he ripped it._

"_I don't need any herbivore warnings," Hibari said blandly, "I am strong."_

"_But, Kyo-san!" Hibari sent a glare from the corner of his eye._

_Kusakabe could only watch and sigh as the person he put first in his life just continued to lie on the rooftop. How could he make him see that it wasn't about strength, but about relationships? _If this continued…_ Kusakabe nearly chewed his grass stalk in half, _history would repeat again_._

_He knew what it was like to love someone, when he met his wife, the first woman to accept his pompadour the way it was, and his loyalty first and foremost to his cousin. He couldn't bear to see the future Kyo-san where he was the perfect leader and fighter, but distant in… anything that required human contact at all. It saddened him to think that the only reason he kept the Vongola close to him was because it had been important to… her, and his healthy respect for his fighters._

_Kyo-san didn't deserve that. But… Kusakabe watched with a sweat drop sliding down his face, his past self didn't care at all. He forgot that about the past Kyo-san. He had __grown __more expressions as time went on._

_Meanwhile, Hibari just continued listening to Hibird chirp. He didn't show it, but it confused him._

_He understood himself, so he didn't have to understand others. But writing a warning letter? To him?_

_He was not an herbivore. So therefore the letter might've been important, or he didn't understand himself at all. The second was out of the question, the first just raised a smirk on his lips._

_A challenge?_

_Bring it on._

* * *

I was jogging and jogging, quietly as the treadmill was, of course, top of the range and whisper silent. The steady thump of my feet as one of my feet landed, only to take off again, trying to fly to a better place.

I had been going at it for… two hours? Now I had to drag my breath in a bit harder, but still fine. My endurance had improved, I guess. It had been silent for those two hours, reminiscing or just dazing. The thoughts whirling in my brain had needed an overhaul, so I blanked out for two hours, another something I hadn't been able to do for… ages.

If there was time for depression, there was time to get out of it. Though I didn't need the slap-across-the-face-what-are-you-doing treatment every anime seemed to do to depressed characters, I needed to sort this by myself. I couldn't help that my thoughts drifted into darker areas until I lifted myself up again. It was hard, trying to answer my questions, for I didn't know the answers.

Then to my surprise, Kyoko came in holding some heavy-looking shopping bags. I looked at her in surprise, before blinking and nodding at her in welcome.

"Kyoko," I said, stepping off the treadmill and walking towards her while trying to adjust to the feeling of walking on solid ground again. "What's the matter?"

Kyoko was silent, staring at the bags before sitting on an unused seat, her hair blowing slightly from the air-conditioner behind her. She stood out, with her colourful clothes and hair, from the white and grey room.

"Alice-chan…" she said looking up at me, "did you know all along?"

What? Oh, mafia. I was technically one myself. I nodded.

"Tsuna-kun said that you came from this elite underground information gathering family. Can you tell me… more about it?"

I blinked at that, surprised, before dragging a chair and sat facing her, my eyes trained at her face. She didn't even flinch. I gave a small smirk. I knew she had guts. The first person to ever openly ask me that question.

"What do you want to know?"

Kyoko looked at me with her big eyes, so much like Tsuna, yet so different. Hers had a different desperation than Tsuna's… though for what, I didn't understand.

"Was everything you told us a lie?"

I shook my head immediately. "Many of the things I have told you about myself are lies, but I truly feel that you are all my friends."

_Did I really though? _my mind whispered cunningly, and I slapped at it.

Kyoko smiled. "I know that, Alice-chan. I was wondering what sort of past you really had. I want to know you, Alice-chan."

Should I tell her?

Well, many of them were rumours anyway. Better tell her the Brighteye cover story before she got any ideas.

"To become a Brighteye, you can't have any connections and be younger than eight. If you fit those criteria, the drip a chemical into your eyes to see if they turn like," I waved to my eyes, "this. If they do, it means you have potential. After that, at eight the child is officially accepted into the family and start training. At twelve, the training should be complete, and is sent on a mission, and when that's finished, another. My mission was Tsuna, for reasons that you know now."

Kyoko was silent, but she had always been a good listener.

"That's so…" I looked at her curiously, wondering what she would say. Unbelievable? Strange? Unexpected? "…sad." She concluded.

Huh?

"Why?" I frowned in confusion.

She looked up, and I was surprised to see that her eyes had tiny tears in them. "Doesn't that mean you haven't really had a family before?"

Oh. I smiled then. Kyoko was just too compassionate. "Yes, I did, before I became a Brighteye. I loved them, and they loved me. Circumstances changed, but I had another group to belong to. Now I have you lot."

"But why did you become one? Couldn't you have refused?"

"No," I replied thinking of Bill. "I was taken away from my family. They think I'm dead now but," I said, now repeating the thing that I've been chanting to myself for years, "if I continue and succeed as a Brighteye…" I looked straight at Kyoko. "I will be able to see them again."

Kyoko stared at me, before blinking away her tears and breathing deeply. At that, Kyoko got up and hugged me. Two hugs in two days. I hesitantly hugged her back.

"You're strong, Alice-chan," she mumbled into my hair. "Going through so many years of loneliness by yourself…"

I shook my head. I wasn't lonely. I think. It was just that all that accumulated stress just exploded… I decided to be honest with Kyoko. "No I'm not. It's just that I don't know when I'll break," I said bluntly.

"You won't ever break, Alice-chan," Kyoko said fiercely, "because we'll glue it all up before you even notice. Me, Tsuna-kun and the others, we're all your friends, aren't we?"

As I sat in stunned silence, Kyoko let go of me, gave one of her pink sparkle smiles as if we didn't just have a serious conversation and walked out, telling me how they were going to make those hash browns that I really liked.

And I only looked at the door with surprised look. Kyoko… Kyoko cared for me more than I thought.

She said the others cared as well. I had never thought about that.

Walking back to the treadmill, I slapped my forehead. I was more self-centred than I thought…

* * *

When I went to dinner early, Haru wordlessly hugged me and a look at Kyoko told me she had blabbed. But strangely, I didn't mind.

"We'll be here, Alice-san, so whenever you need us just call!" she said cheerfully. But I noticed her red eyes and hugged back (my third hug in two days).

"Are _you_ okay?"

Haru blinked, before smiling again. "Yes, Bianchi-san comforted me!"

I gave a small smile and patted her head. "Good. Now where are those hash browns?"

After that, all there was to do was train. Six days passed quickly, and soon I was sitting next to Chrome in the girl's locker room. I frowned in confusion at my suit compared to the others. Chrome and I had gotten black suits, Kyoko and Haru had gotten a maroon and gold one as they were watchers. But the difference was…

"Why did Bianchi give me pants? Not that I'm complaining, but does she secretly think I'm a guy?"

Chrome was half-changed, pulling up her skirt and tying her tie. "N-no, Alice-san. I'm sure Bianchi-san doesn't think of you that way…"

"You always complained about being stereotyped as a girl when you had to fight in this type of clothes," a smooth voice came from the door, "so I prepared pants for you this time, just like the guys."

"Bianchi-san!" Haru squeaked as she hurriedly buttoned her shirt, "Close the door!"

"Yes, yes," Bianchi said, laughing a bit as she went in and closed the door behind her. "It matches you anyway, Alice."

Having pants were much more practical than a skirt. Of course, it wasn't as if suits were designed for battle either. But these had good mobility, I thought as I wheeled my arms about. I felt better with my jacket unbuttoned though, and loosened my tie a bit so it wasn't strangling me.

Bianchi watched this process with distant eyes.

"You still do that even when you're so young…" she said, and I raised an eyebrow at her. She only grinned in response. "Girls! Today is it! Are you ready?" she asked.

"Mhmm!" Kyoko said, nodding with a smile. Haru similarly nodded, with a huge smile.

"Yes," Chrome said timidly, her hands fidgeting around her trident. There was a pregnant pause as they waited for me to answer. I scowled instead.

"Let's just get to the room without all these talks…" I grouched, and the others just laughed and followed me out of the room.

As we walked towards where the guys were gathering, I closed my eyes and breathed.

I cannot help what I am, or what they are, or what I'm doing, or what they're doing. Even though I don't know why… I have to do what I have to do.

Opening my eyes and hearing the greeting I hadn't heard for nearly a week, I brought up a smile.

"Tsuna," I said hoping my smile wasn't as constipated as I thought it was, "how're you?" I ruffled his hair, even as Gokudera was fussing over Ryohei's tie.

"Alice!" He exclaimed, smiling widely. "You're wearing a suit too, huh?" He self-consciously poked at his own suit with a small blush. "I've never worn one before…"

"You look very cool," I assured him. Strange, being with Tsuna chased away the bad thoughts. He just looked at me and accepted me without any thought at all.

I sighed. I knew I thought too much. Gokudera saw me patting Tsuna's head and immediately roared, "What are you doing to Juudaime, freaky-eyes? Have more respect!" He stopped fussing over Ryohei and practically teleported to where I was.

"Haha, Gokudera," I chuckled, pulling a Yamamoto, "It's fine right?"

"No, it's not you–"

"Now, now, we've just met each other after nearly a week, so don't fight you two, okay?" Tsuna said, trying to calm us down.

I blinked at Tsuna. "I wasn't arguing."

"Don't rebut Juudaime!"

"Huh?"

"Y-you!" Gokudera choked out, his arms flailing as if he wanted to claw me while Fuuta held him back.

Tsuna just sighed to the screams of Ryohei going EXTREME over tying his tie.

His crazy family…

* * *

**"**Whoa!" We all looked over to where Shouichi was standing in the doorway, shocked.

"Irie-san," Tsuna greeted happily.

"You're late, freak," Gokudera said disgruntled as he looked at the doorway in irritation (partly caused by me).

"You guys… You look so sharp!" He said, waving his arms around.

"It's actually pretty embarrassing really," Tsuna said with that small blush again, looking down at the floor. At that, Reborn's eyes _gleamed_. Probably taking Tsuna's comment personally about his fashion sense.

"I had them made to order for this fight," Reborn said to Shouichi. "The Vongola Mafia started as a vigilante group to help protect the people. Each generation of the Vongola Family had donned this attire when risking their lives to fulfil that duty." Everyone stood silent to listen to Reborn, except for, of course, Tsuna.

"Wh-what's with that?" Tsuna asked with his eyes deadpanned. Reborn looked at him, "Making the Mafia sound all good and cool…"

Reborn immediately rebutted though. "The Vongola Family started as a model organisation, though they might have dabbled in unspeakable things later on," he added with a little smirk.

I watched Tsuna as he turned to face Reborn. "That's the problem!"

"But there's nothing wrong about this fight!" Irie started before something else captured my attention. Haru was pointing at me standing a little off ways from the rest of the family, whispering to Kyoko, who nodded and then marched surreptitiously with Haru towards me.

"You should be standing next to the rest of the Family, Alice-san!" Haru whispered, pushing me towards Ryohei. "You're one of the main fighters as well!"

"But I always stand there," I said flatly, pointing to my position near the wall.

"No," Kyoko said firmly.

I sighed and gave in, standing next to them just as Tsuna finished putting on his headphones and turned around.

"Gokudera-kun."

"Yes, Juudaime," Gokudera nodded, smiling at Tsuna. He smiled back.

"Onii-san."

Ryohei grunted an affirmation, smiling confidently back at Tsuna.

"Lambo."

Lambo on Ryohei's shoulder punched the air. "Going to do this!"

"Alice."

I looked at Tsuna blankly, before giving a thumb up. He smiled and nodded at me before turning to the other side.

"Chrome."

"Yes, Boss," she said gently, holding her trident close to her chest.

"Basil-kun."

"Sawada-dono," he only said, his ever present smile on his face.

"Fuuta. Bianchi. I-pin, Giannini, Shouichi-kun, Spanner," he said with all of them saying some type of affirmation, giving their support (with Shouichi miraculously changed into a suit at the back). Then he paused, and looked back the other way, his eyes a bit more gentle. "Kyoko-chan, Haru."

"Yes, Tsuna-kun," Kyoko nodded, smiling as support.

Haru bounced, giving an exuberant "Yes, Tsuna-san!" Tsuna smiled at them, before looking forward at last, his smile gone.

"Let's go."

And we all yelled our support behind, in varying levels of loudness, and I was strangely moved that I completed the triangle of Guardian fighters behind Tsuna, since Yamamoto was still training with Squalo.

I smiled too, before frowning as we started walking towards the exit of the base. We could do this. I wouldn't let anyone get in the way.

Even if I was sending another to hell.

* * *

I walked next to Chrome, going through the morning of Namimori and up the shrine's steps. We just stuck close to each other, drawing comfort from the other's presence even if we didn't talk. I-pin in her arms was serious as well, adding to the solemnity of the occasion.

The people in front of us were steadily going up the stairs looking only forward, but I looked at the forest occasionally. Where did Hibari and Yamamoto leap out from again?

When we reached the top of the stairs, there was this strange thing in front of Namimori Shrine. We caught up to the other girls. Kyoko looked at the thing strangely. "Is that a festival float?"

Lambo, transferred from Ryohei to Haru, immediately went hyper. "Festival! Yipee! Lambo-san loves festivals!"

I ruffled his hair. "There's no takoyaki here, Lambo." He looked at me curiously before making to jump out of Haru's arms.

Gokudera suddenly shouted. "No, wait! Don't get too close, it might be a Millefiore trap!" Everyone tensed before Shouichi at the back saw what the commotion was about and jogged next to me and scratched the back of his sheepishly.

"Aha, sorry about that. I forgot to tell you. That's going to be our base unit." Spanner looked at him from the other side, before looking at me.

He peered at me curiously, before I blinked at him and waved. He nodded. Oh yeah… I have never talked to Spanner properly before. I was always either knocked out, training, or him busily working next to Shouichi. But as he was a talented engineer, he should know I was a Brighteye from my eyes.

He might have been wondering why two of the 'same' family members were supporting different sides of the fight.

Everyone else on the other hand was inspecting the base.

"It better not be a piece of junk inside," Gokudera said, looking at the cover doubtfully before looking back at Shouichi with deadpan eyes.

"We did what we could!" Shouichi said defensively. I patted his shoulder consolingly and he had to massage the bridge of his nose. Poor stressed Shouichi.

On the other hand, Tsuna was worrying about Yamamoto and Hibari. But since I wasn't overly concerned… I yawned, and the two other girls immediately looked concerned over me. Chrome had already drifted a little bit away to look at the base unit closer.

"Alice-chan, didn't you sleep well yesterday?" Kyoko asked in concern.

"Ah, yeah," I said.

Haru frowned and waved a finger at me. "You should have eaten more at dinner yesterday, Alice-san! You all need your strength!"

I was about to tell her that I didn't need my strength since I wouldn't be fighting when Tsuna started shouting Yamamoto and Hibari's names. "Where are they?" Tsuna cried worriedly, looking around at the forest.

Giannini added his own coin to the mix. "It can't be that… they don't plan on coming?"

"What?" Kyoko and Haru asked in unison.

I yawned as Reborn appeared.

"It could also be that they failed their training."

Hibari? Fail training? Impossible.

Everyone else was getting more solemn by the second though, though Basil tried to get morale up Byakuran's huge face started to appear in the sky.

"Yah, peoples," he said as his face radiated white light onto us little people.

"Ah! What's that?" Tsuna said in his 'hiie' scream voice. I only raised an eyebrow.

Byakuran had vanity issues.

And yes, blah blah, hill getting eradicated, the light fading, tension…

Oh shoot, I was getting back into the habit of watching at a distance. I banged my head on Kyoko's shoulder. This was real life, not a plot, not a plot. Get that into my head.

Then Yamamoto and Hibari jumped out of the trees last second ninja-style, box out and ready and everyone did the same except me. They would be fine, and I didn't see the point of wasting a huge lump of my life on doing this. I only opened my box for appearances and stood near Yamamoto.

"Shouichi, look at the reading," Spanner said with wide eyes. Shouichi looked.

"Ten million Fiamma volts!" he exclaimed in surprise and wonder, and everyone watched open-mouthed. Reborn only smirked though, and when he saw me not surprised at all he only smirked all the wider.

"So I wasn't mistaken," Shouichi murmured, looking back at us, "I wasn't mistaken bringing them into this world!"

And my box weapon preened into my fingers. Both of them. Yamamoto looked at me with surprise when he saw two animals, like himself before shooting a smile.

"Man, you guys are late," Gokudera grouched specifically at Yamamoto when it was obvious that the teleportation system was working. Yamamoto just looked at him from his crouched ninja position with a smile.

"Sorry about that."

Hibari had to make his opinion clear around then. "I am here for personal reasons," he said with his eyes closed. "It's got nothing to do with you." When Roll affirmed it, I smiled.

Yesyes, he had to make it clear he wasn't with us or fighting with us. We got it.

"But how did you know they were coming, Sawada?" Ryohei wanted to know.

The coolest, most shounen style answer would have been 'I trusted my family!' and be in-character for Tsuna, but instead he just stared calmly to the front and answered instead, "I just knew that we needed everyone together to defeat Byakuran."

And everyone was obviously touched (except for Hibari, who obviously got annoyed at being lumped together with us herbivores) and Ryohei looked stunned for a moment, Garyuu's arm over his shoulder.

Byakuran's face, which had blown away, collected again and I listened disinterestedly, more interested in stroking the feathers of my box weapon, grabbing onto it for stability when we started floating.

My face grew grim.

Choice was starting, the origin of all this mess.

* * *

I rubbed my head, trying not to breathe too much of the dust. Looking around, I recognised Chrome near me and I scooted over just in time to hear Lambo start a tantrum.

"Sorry," Chrome said quietly with her brows furrowed gently wondering what to do. And with that Fuuta immediately ran over.

"Here, Lambo." Lambo opened his mouth and Fuuta dropped a grape candy into it. I looked at Fuuta blankly.

"As expected of Lambo's carer of seven years. You would make a really good mother."

"Aha, Alice-nee, I'm male…"

Picking up my box, I shrugged. "The same."

All the while, the dust was clearing and shadows appeared a bit farther away from our group. "Welcome to the Choice arena," an annoyingly familiar voice said.

"Byakuran," Tsuna said, facing him fully before widening his eyes fully. "What?" He exclaimed, suddenly seeing what was beyond the dust.

We were on the roof of a high-rise building in a sea of sky-scrapers. "We're in the middle of a bunch of sky-scrapers!" Basil exclaimed. I looked at him. Obviously.

Byakuran just smiled on the side. "It seems like we've met many times, but is this the first time we've met in person, Tsunayoshi-kun?" he said and smiled as we all tensed and focused on him for the first time. Flanked by all his high-ranking six Funeral Wreaths, with one that I didn't remember being there.

A beautiful tall woman was standing at the back next to Torikabuto, and her gold eyes told me all that I needed. She was Belle. She was tall…

I didn't like her already. (Of course, that didn't stop the guilt of needing to eradicate her plot, but I was at least relieved I didn't like her on first glance).

"Th-there they are! Byakuran and the real Six Funeral Wreaths!" Tsuna yelled, taking a step back. Kyoko and Haru, who already had a notion on who Byakuran was immediately shrunk into themselves and Bianchi, I-pin and Fuuta took a defensive stance over them.

"Wah!" Lambo said eyes wide, "they're scary! I'm on this side," he said as he leaped out of Chrome's arms and behind Giannini (who looked like a very unwilling meat shield).

"This is where we'll be fighting," Byakuran just continued.

"Huh? Here?" Tsuna said in surprise.

"That's right. Don't you think it's such a fine location?"

Tsuna frowned in worry. "W-we can't possibly fight in an area with so many people!"

"I thought you might say that," Byakuran said over a disdainful sniff the Brighteye behind him (Belle?) made, "so I got rid of all the people."

"Now that you mention it," Yamamoto said in front of me, "this place is awfully quiet."

"Especially is you consider that we're in the middle of a metropolis," Bianchi added.

Byakuran only smiled. "We're the only people here," he said, carefree.

"What–" Gokudera started before being interrupted by Shouichi.

"A battlefield specially made for Choice," he said darkly, nervously, as he stared straight at Byakuran. I looked at Belle instead. She was looking impatient and annoyed. Probably wanted to kill Tsuna right there.

At that sudden thought, I moved closer to Tsuna. I won't allow that.

I watched Belle closely as they went through the explanation process. She didn't even move, only flicker her hair over her shoulder a few times, and inspected her nails. I frowned; maybe I was wrong?

Or was it that there was something that made her sure of her victory?

Byakuran walked forwards with the gyroroulette, and that was when she smirked. I immediately narrowed my eyes at her before flicking to Byakuran. He had projected out what the gyroroulette was showing, and I immediately understood why she had been so relaxed.

The pink columns in the air had everything as normal. Sun, cloud, mist, rain, thunder, storm – and that's when it stops being normal. Under storm was one that I hadn't expected to see.

A single star, shining innocently in pink light, in a column that wasn't supposed to be there. I didn't question Byakuran's taste in colour and just stared.

So what now?

Participate?

* * *

Sort out facts. Now.

Crawling into a cupboard and disappearing. No chance.

Participate? No chance.

Belle smirking. She participating? Probably.

She participate I participate?

Yes.

I growled, ticked, but watched avidly as Tsuna and Byakuran turned the roulette… Only

Millefiore: 1 Sun, 2 Mist, 1 Cloud, 1 Star

Vongola: 1 Rain, 1 Storm, 1 Sky, 1 Star, 2 Null

I cursed.

Participation confirmed.

… I wonder if there was a cupboard in the base unit I could hide in. I slapped myself. No! No wallowing in misery! I forced myself to tune in to what Shouichi was saying.

"Byakuran-san, since I don't have a Ring, I can be considered as Null element, right?" He was asking, and they looked at each other, Byakuran unusually serious until he smiled again.

"Well, I can make an exception."

In the background, I saw Belle frown and mutter something like, from what I could hear, "he's… his special _Sho-chan _privileges again…"

…Was Belle jealous of Shouichi?

That snapped me out of my bad mood immediately. The very thought of something as pretty and _tall _as she was, jealous over dorky Shouichi!

Shouichi, on the other hand, was much more serious than I.

"Then, Tsunayoshi-kun," he said with his eyes shadowed, "we know the line-up already. The participating Vongola members will be Sky, Tsunayoshi-kun." Tsuna listened seriously. "Storm will be Gokudera-kun. Rain will be Yamamoto-kun; Star will be Alice-san. Null element will be represented by Spanner and me."

Ha, I laughed in resignation in my mind. That clinched it even more.

Why was I always getting dragged into fights I didn't want to be in? Mukuro was the same, Varia the same, and now this. I gave a 180 mood swing and sighed.

* * *

We were helping Yamamoto fix up his suit when he turned to me.

"Alice, you have two box animals like me! Those birds suit you," he flashed a grin. I nodded back at him.

"Yeah, I found out a few days ago."

"Eh? You have two box animals, Alice?" Tsuna turned away from the screens and looked towards me. I nodded.

"Yes, Hawk and Falcon. They're good kids."

At my words, Tsuna's eyes grew deadpanned. I raised an eyebrow. Was there something wrong with my naming choices?

"Err, by any chance, Alice," Tsuna approached slowly, "is your box weapon a hawk and a falcon?"

I nodded. "Of course."

"Ahaha!" Yamamoto laughed as he struggled to tie his tie, "that's so cool! What's the difference between a hawk and a falcon anyway?"

Gokudera grew irritated as he watched Yamamoto tie knots with his tie. "Baseball idiot, I'll show you how to tie your tie so come here."

Yamamoto looked at Gokudera with surprise before smiling widely. "Okay."

"There are many differences between a hawk and a falcon," I started lecturing, "and the first deals with body size. For you see, the falcon is smaller than the hawk…"

"Put it through like this, and then this…" Gokudera slowly tied the tie.

"Like this?" Yamamoto confirmed, tightening it.

"So therefore the falcon is slightly faster. Also, the falcon isn't primarily a glider unlike the hawk…"

"Man, you should be able to do this! It's knowledge every man should have!"

"Not my fault, I never wear suits." Yamamoto said as he smiled down at Gokudera.

"…It flaps its wings to fly. Hawks kill its prey in its talons as well, another difference between the falcon since the falcon kills in its beak…"

Tsuna tensed his shoulders in the corner. "I didn't know how to tie a tie either…"

The computer beeped and I gave up.

"What's the matter?" Tsuna asked, looking at Spanner.

"They've sent us a map," Spanner said calmly, looking at the monitor. "This appears to be the south-eastern area." We all walked closer to listen. "Buildings of all sizes around the area and plenty of obstructions to vision."

"I see, not too bad," Shouichi said leaning over Spanner's chair.

Tsuna frowned in worry. "Shouichi-kun, are you okay?"

Shouichi straightened out, smiling back at us. "Mm, so don't worry. Anyway," he asked us, "how do you like the base we made?"

"I was amazed at how nice it is," Tsuna smiled brightly, "how were you able to build it in such a short time?"

Shouichi made to answer, happy about answering anything about engineering when a voice from to monitor stopped him. "Three minutes have passed," a Cervello's voice came through a speaker, "are both Families ready for battle?"

There was a chair next to Spanner, and it was there that Shouichi made to now, sitting and grabbing a small microphone. "Yes," he said quietly into it.

A pause, before the Cervello's voices were heard again. "Then Choice battle… Start!"

* * *

Instead of coolly running to our motorbikes and foolishly driving around so that we could look, well, cool, like what so many other people did, we had that chanting ring again.

"Vongola… FIGHT!" Yamamoto shouted happily.

"Yeah!" Tsuna shouted with Shouichi and Spanner.

"I haven't felt so hyped up in a while!" Yamamoto exclaimed happily. Tsuna sighed as he wiped his sweat.

Gokudera massaged his temples with one hand.

"I haven't felt so _down_ in a while," Gokudera mumbled.

"Guess this isn't a Japanese thing then," Spanner said blankly. I, who stood next to him, matched his blankness.

"That was sudden," I said.

Shouichi recovered. "Anyway, for our strategy, we can only locate the enemy from the Flame radar," he said calmly, "so Spanner and I will stay here, analyse the data and tell you what to do…"

I looked at the screen, where flame readings were all bunched up at where the Millefiore base was supposed to be. They were preparing, I see…

"Based on your fighting styles, I believe it would be best to put Gokudera-kun on defence, Tsunayoshi-kun and Yamamoto-kun on attack, and Alice-san as a scout and back-up."

"I'm on defence?" Gokudera burst out, as Yamamoto gave a happy pointer.

"If your defence isn't good enough, you'll end up losing no matter how many points you score," he said happily.

"Stop comparing everything to baseball, you baseball freak!" Gokudera yelled at Yamamoto. That was, of course, before Tsuna stepped in.

"We'll be counting on you then, Gokudera-kun."

Gokudera snapped up, smile on his face, happy blush on his cheek.

"Yes! Of course!" Gokudera leaned over to Tsuna. "I won't let anyone lay a finger on him," he said shining a bright smile upon Tsuna.

I watched all this with a raised eyebrow before frowning. Me as back-up? I shook my head at Shouichi. "Sorry, Shouichi, I need to do something else. I'll try to listen to you though, and I'll try to be where I'm needed."

Gokudera turned on me. "Oi, freaky-eyes, you can't do that."

Shouichi looked at me with a contemplative "hmm"

He clapped his hands. "Okay, when you're doing that, please try relay information on what the others are doing. That's all you need to do."

"…That's fine," I acquiesced.

"Okay, let's go," Yamamoto said, already starting to go towards the back where the motorbikes were stored.

"Yes," Tsuna said seriously.

And _then_ we started the 'cool running' and motorbike leaping. All of us (except Tsuna) ignored the helmets set beside the motorbike and stared at the door as Shouichi and Spanner blabbed all the technical stuff to get the doors open.

Staring down the dark corridor, I revved the engine and tried to calm myself down.

Where would Belle be?

Or more specifically, what was Belle's target?

Tsuna…

I opened my box weapon and stared into Falcon's eyes. It screeched as it understood the message.

"Good Falcon. Remember to follow from a while back so Tsuna's position isn't obvious, okay?"

It screeched again, and I nodded. The door in front of us opened, letting light in and with a muted roar, the motorbike leapt forward, Falcon following me before wheeling into the air towards Tsuna's exit. I smiled, before opening a line to Shouichi.

"_Shouichi, I'm going to open my box weapon. It's okay, Star Flames are harder to track."_

"_Alice, Tsuna is starting evasive pattern F and engaging the enemy. Do not obstruct him."_

"_Yes."_

I opened my box again, to let Hawk out. He spread his brown wings, flecked with black and stared at me with eyes as yellow as mine. I had found this out in training, useful for mobility at least.

In training, I had been having a headache about how I would travel. Tsuna shot around with his gloves, Yamamoto with his short swords, Gokudera with his Sistema C.A.I. If I had to have at least some use, I had to shoot around like a rocket too.

But how?

As I was dazing off into space, I forgot to stop the flow of my Flames into my box weapon and voila.

One huge Hawk and Falcon staring at me. Huge enough to let me ride.

I grinned at it. Awesome.

* * *

"_Tsunayoshi-kun, you'll engage the enemy in five seconds," Irie's voice said quietly into his ear. Tsuna muttered affirmation. "Three… Two… One…"_

_Tsuna braked hard, flinging his helmet aside and popping two Dying Will Pills into his mouth, flying around the building even as his decoy got shot through. He sped, turning a tight curve and narrowing his eyes at the back of a cloaked figure._

"_Torikabuto, behind you!" he heard faintly from a speaker somewhere on the cloaked man, and he put on a little burst of speed, and the man seemed to be turning in slow motion._

"_Too late," he murmured before driving his fist into the man's back, using his other glove's acceleration to make it stronger. The masked man curved backwards around his punch, before flying forward and hitting flat against the side of a building._

_Tsuna widened his eyes. The building wasn't damaged._

"_The buildings in the Lightning arena are covered with the hard factor of lightning flames, and twenty times harder than normal buildings." He looked over his shoulder to see the Cervello flying with their Sun flamed boots._

"_If you crash into one at high speed it will feel like crashing onto the ground after falling from the roof of those tall buildings," the other informed._

_Tsuna immediately looked back at Torikabuto as he slowly slid down the glass of the skyscraper. "This can't be…"_

"_Simpleton," a deep voice said, the mask looking back at Tsuna without one crack at all before the whole man exploding into writhing black strips flying towards Tsuna._

"_These are…" Tsuna said, looking at them, focusing until the black strips turned into snakes with a crackle of green flame on them._

"_Weakling…" Torikabuto said slowly, his eyes trained on Tsuna._

_High above, a bird call sounded loudly in the empty sky._

* * *

I perched on top of one of the buildings, arms half wrapping around Hawk's huge neck. It gazed around with me, and I closed my eyes. My vision immediately split into two as I concentrated.

Half of my vision was what Hawk was scanning, much clearer than I would ever hope to have. It could see clearly even to the end of the city. I was focusing more on the other half though. Through Falcon's eyes, there was a spiked ball in the sky, which soon collapsed into Tsuna holding Natsu's Cambio Forma Modo Defensa: Giotto's cloak.

Good, no use in worrying about Tsuna now. Falcon now turned started wheeling, scanning the whole city for my main enemy and gave a loud call.

Falcon and I narrowed our eyes, and there she was, jetting about on grey-coloured Flames.

I snapped my eyes open, and paused to readjust my eyes.

"Let's go, Hawk." It screeched, and unfurled its great wings. Then it dove, and I had to squint my eyes against the wind. Then it got its current and started to glide. We wove around a couple of buildings. To my surprise, Belle was in front of the Vongola's spectator's box.

Through the glass I saw all the people exclaiming over huge Hawk. But Hawk wasn't really made to hover, so we wheeled about instead, our eyes trained on Belle.

She turned around, a smirk on her pretty lips.

"So you're finally here… Alice-_chan."_

I nodded.

"Yes."

* * *

"_There's something here. Sorry, we'll talk later," Yamamoto's voice came through the speaker to Shouichi, and he narrowed his eyes in understanding._

"_Roger."_

_Yamamoto stood with his sword at the ready, staring intently at the sun-flame decoy. Nothing. He tensed, gripping his sword tighter. Still nothing. _

_Narrowing his eyes, he saw a spark. Yamamoto immediately ran forward, widening his eyes and trying to see the target, but just as he approached the decoy, it exploded into huge vines that grew in seconds, reaching up to the sky to an impossible height._

"_What–" he exclaimed as vines came out of the ground to lock his legs, and another hit his hand. His Shigure Kintoki flew and landed blade first into the cement, where it changed back into its original bamboo form._

"_This isn't good," Yamamoto said, eyeing his sword a few metres away without a chance of running. But his attention went to a few arrow-shaped vines that shot at him, which he dodged, but then locked him into a position where he couldn't hope to even move._

"_Good dodging," a slightly muffled voice praised, and Yamamoto looked up from the floor. And in front of him, Mist flames dispersed to reveal the masked subordinate of Torikabuto, Saru. "But you can no longer move. I shall finish you now."_

"_You're that… Saru guy," Yamamoto said, staring at him. _

"_But I find it ironic," Saru continued, ignoring Yamamoto, "you barely escaped with your life the first time only to find you're facing the same foe again, Yamamoto Takeshi."_

"_Huh? Once again?" _

"_Will this help you understand?" Saru spat out angrily, his mask also disappearing in a burst of Mist flames to reveal a familiar face, with more scars than last time but the yellow eyes were the same._

"_Genkishi!"_

_Gokudera started, and Tsuna widened his eyes even as he continued speeding towards Daisy. Shouichi looked at the monitor in disbelief. "Impossible! Didn't Tsunayoshi-kun defeat Genkishi?"_

_In the spectator's box, all of the people looked shocked, only two who didn't understand. "Wh-who is that dangerous looking person?" Haru asked, gripping Bianchi. _

_Outside the window of the spectator's box, Belle smirked as Alice nodded. For both of them, it was still going towards the plot._

* * *

"We don't really need introductions, do we," Belle said even as she flew lazily upwards, "since I've met you at least thirty times."

"Bill told me about you."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh really? That's interesting. He didn't tell me anything about you though, probably because I've already known you for technically the past sixty years…"

Sixty. She didn't look a day older than twenty-four.

"Really?" I said doubtfully even as Hawk started wheeling upwards to match her. She smirked.

"I don't look it, do I?" She boasted, flicking her hair over her shoulder.

"Yeah." I nodded.

She frowned. "You're not supposed to agree, you silly little girl."

I shrugged, before tuning in to something Shouichi was saying to Tsuna.

"_Tsunayoshi-kun, this is our chance! You've defeated Torikabuto, Alice-san is currently facing Belle, and Genkishi disguised as Saru is currently battling Yamamoto-kun. That leaves Kikyo, who hasn't discovered this base unit yet because of the decoys." _Irie said, _"You should head for the enemy target now while their guard is down."_

"_Got it," _Tsuna replied.

Belle had been fiddling with her earpiece all the while, and her face brightened. "What's this about heading towards our base?"

I stared at her, before checking her earpiece and hurriedly making contact with Shouichi.

"Shouichi, switch our communication lines or scramble it, Belle has hacked into our line."

"_What?" _came the startled exclamation, and Spanner's voice came through faintly.

"_I'm on it. Give it half a minute."_

"Yes," I replied back, eyeing Belle as she stopped fiddling with her earpiece and winked at me. The she shot away, and Hawk immediately gave chase. I used my right hand to ride the jolts as Hawk flapped its wings hard. We rose immediately by a few metres, and we had already gained on her. "Currently pursuing Belle, who is heading for their base unit."

"Detain her as much as you can," Shouichi's command came through a bit garbled, but still coherent. "Tsunayoshi-kun is heading there, and Yamamoto-kun can't move right now."

"On it."

Hawk was flying really fast, but Belle just looked over her shoulder with her smirk and just shot faster. Hawk, though large and really good for attack and defence, wasn't fast enough.

I activated my box weapon's special ability before jumping forward. I couldn't be touching Hawk to do this, or I would be swapped with them.

"Swap, Hawk! Falcon!"

There was a slight shimmer of grey flame, before Hawk was replaced by the slightly smaller Falcon. But it was much faster.

I landed on it, and Falcon gave a bird cry before flapping its wings hard and catching up with Belle. We were side by side before I lunged sideways, a flame enhanced chopstick in my hand. In a flash, another weapon with a grey sheen was blocking my attack.

Groaning internally, I wondered why the world was so unfair. Belle's weapon was a trident.

Oh great.

And what did I have? I stared at my two pairs of chopsticks. And sighed again.

A crackle from my earphone got my attention. "_Yamamoto! Yamamoto, you won!"_ Tsuna's voice came over. Belle used my second of distraction to attack, flipping her trident around and stabbing it with a precision that came only with years of training.

Maybe that sixty year comment wasn't a lie after all.

"I'm much more skilled that you, Alice-_chan, _and have a much better weapon," she said mockingly. "You can't have a split of attention."

I couldn't focus on what the others were saying, or what Irie was trying to update me on. Her jabs were too fast, and I backed away, jumping off the side of a building where Falcon swooped to catch me. We wavered a bit in the air, as I landed a bit heavily but after a few wing strokes we stabilised and I caught my breath.

"Irie," I panted, "Engaging Belle in combat. She's much stronger, I don't know how long I'll last."

"_Okay,"_ came the confirmation from Shouichi, _"Tsunayoshi-kun and Yamamoto-kun are already heading there by air. Just hold out for a little longer."_

Belle flew towards me, her trident pointed straight. Her range was much larger than mine. Shoot.

"Okay." I replied Shouichi before ordering Falcon to fly up to the sky. Belle didn't follow me, but that was fine. Calculating where she would go, I dived. Seeing me coming, she just held up her trident straight up, waiting for us to impale ourselves on it.

As if we were stupid enough to do that. My chopsticks were strong enough. I jumped off Falcon's back at exactly the right moment, whacking her trident away with all four of my chopsticks and it was Falcon who ploughed her over and caught me yet again.

I stroked it, and it called back to me. Belle had hit one of the buildings, though not very hard.

The Star-flame powered boots flared up again, and she flew towards me, rubbing her side.

"Again! You attacked me again! Why, forty-six out of forty-six times do you have to attack me? We're fellow Brighteyes! I haven't hit you properly yet, have I?" She said with her gold eyes narrowed.

She was going easy on me?

From the chaos in the control room, it seemed as if Tsuna had already slipped into Torikabuto's illusion.

"Why are you always so into your mission? They won't ever understand you anyway. You don't need friends in this world." She jetted away, looking at the Flame Radar on her wrist towards where, I presumed, Tsuna was.

Falcon had automatically followed, his speed picking up ever the faster. But the off-hand words (had they been calculated) struck something in me. I gritted my teeth as I sped after her to be neck to neck again and yelled at her.

"Tsuna needed friendship, Yamamoto and Gokudera needed acceptance, and I thought I didn't need them both but I do," I said to Belle defiantly, "even if you say that they won't ever understand me, I realised they would try their best."

I scowled at her. "And that's all I need."

She only sniffed, tossing thick black hair over her shoulder and raising an eyebrow even while turning a tight corner. Falcon flapped hard to change, and I stroked his neck. _Hang on. _"How cute. That's what you've said to me twenty-six times in other worlds." She suddenly stopped, hovering in the air and Falcon had a hard time braking, and instead wheeled backwards and perching on a lamp-post.

"This is the first time _I_ have said it," I rebutted instead, wary of the trident she was twirling with one hand. "This is the first time I've believed it to be true." The polished metal of her trident gleamed as I continued talking.

"That's good and all," Belle yawned as she continued twirling, "but I really have to get going."

She suddenly twisted her trident and held it on an odd angle, and suddenly the glare was on my eyes. I shielded my eyes on reflex. That was when she acted.

Her boots gave an extra boost of fire, and she shot away. Trying to blink away the spots Falcon immediately gave chase, giving an almighty screech that echoed against the hollow buildings. It became apparent.

She was getting close to Tsuna. And I remembered something that I had momentarily forgot.

She was trying… to kill Tsuna here, wasn't she? I narrowed my eyes at her determined face. So be it.

"You won't hurt Tsuna, I won't let you!" I yelled, glaring at Belle as fiercely as I could even as Falcon flew at his fastest speed to try and catch up with Belle. I tried calculating when we would reach Tsuna with the speed we were going.

"Just try," Belle smirked, "I've been waiting too long for this." Then she paused and smiled. "And anyway, he's just a _character,_ why get so bothered over it?"

How could she say that such, emotional people aren't human? For some reason, I grew angry on my friend's behalf.

"Tsuna isn't just a character, he's a human!" I yelled over the whipping breeze that were threatening to carry my voice away. "And that's why I won't let you hurt him!"

"You're yet again too into your mission," Belle dismissed, her eyes already on the vaguely shimmering area of the city, where I could see Sky flames in the sky, and Tsuna floating and trying to escape the illusion with Hawk wheeling over him dodging attacks as well. We were getting close. "Getting too close to your mission is just stupid. Just protect him as per mission rules."

I squinted against the wind. The dot with orange flames was slowly becoming bigger and bigger. Not good. "It's not because of my mission, that I protect him!" I yelled. Then I stopped. What?

But my surprise couldn't last long as my eyes had to squint again and trying to make the scramble of my thoughts in order. But in a battle, there is no time to think. In my earphone, Shouichi was already retreating, which relieved me.

The Choice game was nearly at the end. I only had to protect Tsuna for a few more minutes…

In the background, Yamamoto was yelling, putting his all in attacking the enemy base, while Tsuna was breathing hard into his speaker. Irie was muttering about gaining time, and I, eyeing Belle, needed to do my job as well.

I couldn't let her interrupt with the plot.

Belle in the corner of my eye just sniffed. "Definitely too into your mission," she said, even as she reached for her unopened box. "I've wasted too much time, now that I can see him…" She lighted her flame and a trickle leaked into her box. "Open special box! _TELEPORT!"_

And suddenly she wasn't there but near Tsuna, and it took a split second to register what happened.

"Damn it," I cursed, before closing my eyes and focusing. Think of my box weapon's special ability… "Swap, Falcon, Hawk!"

Two simultaneous screeches, and suddenly I was being squished, air pressed out of my lungs and I was above Tsuna, with Belle only a few metres away charging an attack with her trident held at the ready. Torikabuto was out of sight but obviously affecting Tsuna, who was dodging attacks I couldn't see.

"_Die, VONGOLA TRASH!"_ Belle screeched, and in her hand was her trident pointed straight to where Tsuna was flying to and I panicked.

I thought about what I just said and what it meant… I wasn't protecting Tsuna because it was my mission, _but because I care… _I didn't have to worry about belonging to the group or not.

With that thought, I jumped off Falcon and fell right in front of where Belle would have attacked Tsuna.

With Tsuna behind me sensing something with his hyper intuition, I was facing him when his eyes, so different from the warm brown I was used to, widened as he turned and saw me. I grinned weakly and waved, before looking down to where his gaze wasn't wavering, watching as a steady trickle of blood seeped through my shirt and trickled to the ground fifty metres away.

But it was okay. I finally got my answer. I wasn't doing this because of my mission anymore, I didn't need to fear not being understood because I had friends, and I was doing all this because I _cared._ It was a yelling contest with my enemy that got me on the right tracks, ironically enough, but true, and I smiled because now that I realised my purpose I felt so much lighter. I smiled at Tsuna's horror-filled eyes.

Yes, I was doing this for them.

With a big heave, I twisted myself while gripping the trident that was sticking out of my stomach tightly. She was tugging on it, trying to get it out but my hands were firm even with the blood. I twirled my chopsticks in my other hand, getting the correct angle before lunging backwards and stabbed Belle straight into the eyes but missed and instead struck her temple. But her eyes were drooping, and I knew I was successful in at least knocking her out. It paid not to be human at times. Belle's boots gave a splutter before failing without flames.

I watched as the ground hurtled closer and closer, before closing my eyes and smiled.

"ALICE!" I heard Tsuna scream above me and he dived under me to try and catch me without making the injury worse. But no matter how gentle, there was still a slight jolt. I didn't even have the energy to wince.

"Alice, Alice, can you hear me, Alice!" Tsuna started frantically calling me, and I knew from the tone of voice he was losing his dying will. "Alice, answer me! Please answer me!" He broke down into sobs. "W-why are you always protecting me Alice? Please answer me, answer me, please answer me…"

I ripped my eyes open with sheer force of will. That's dying will for you.

"Tsuna," I scowled as normally as I could. "What are you doing here? Shouichi needs your help."

"B-but Alice," Tsuna said, his eyes flickering from orange to brown and back to orange again, "I saw her stab you, h-her trident right through…"

I closed my eyes and ripped the trident right out. Ack, blood under my suit. And the _PAIN_. "It just grazed me. The jacket made it seem like it stabbed me right through." I quickly amended my statement when I saw how much blood I was leaking. "Okay, deep gouges through my side, but it wasn't anything fatal. Go to Shouichi. The sooner we end this game the sooner the first aid." I breathed in heavily, only to stop when I realised that I did that I wanted to start coughing.

Coughing probably meant coughing blood. Coughing blood in front of a distraught Tsuna not good. So I didn't breathe deeply.

"Go!" I shouted, and panicked when I saw Tsuna's eyes turn orange and him trying to pick me up. He wouldn't be fast enough this way!

"No, I've got Falcon and Hawk, so go. Please go and win this game." I shot a half-attempted smile before moulding back into the blank face. It was the only face I could hold.

Tsuna shook his head, and I immediately whistled. A still giant Hawk pushed Tsuna aside and flung him into the air while Falcon shielded me.

"You can't do anything here, so go to Shouichi where you can do something. Go." I said through a crack in Falcon's wings and Tsuna still hovered staring at Hawk and Falcon until, with tense shoulders, reluctantly shot away.

I sighed in relief and closed my eyes slowly…

* * *

**Sorry, I'll leave it at that. Gaah, please review? *puppy dog eyes* (only they're not, because my eyes are bloodshot right now) I hope it wasn't too awkward sounding. I'll be probably abandoning you all for a week or two. **

**Physics is annoying...**


	38. The past makes up for who you Are

**I think there was a mis-writing about how Amanda made friends with Alice. I can't find it either. Ah well, people who read this note will know. This is in accordance with the first chapter - kindy friends!**

**If there are more mistakes than usual, please don't mind me. I scrounged this up, and my sister is out so she can't beta. And I can't let my readers wait now, can I? ^^ Please enjoy!**

* * *

Lying there, blood pooling like a bad movie, hand still gripping the trident I stared behind Hawk and Falcon's concerned eyes to Tsuna. It was strangely peaceful.

Looking as Tsuna carefully positioned himself above me to fire his X-burner to escape the illusion while not hurting me, the edges of my vision started buzzing with black dots. With the explosion after that, and Tsuna's one last glance down at the three pairs of yellow eyes boring holes into him, he flew off suspicious trails on his cheeks.

But it was there, lying there, that was strange. Peaceful. Yes, it was peaceful. Strange.

My mind drifted off…

Back when it was still me, Jack (who hadn't gotten into his J.K. phase yet), a mom, a dad, a grandma and…

_Amanda_

* * *

_It could have been the first time I saw her. Sitting there, hands prim and posed, her back straight stiff as if she was much better than us. Her red hair was tied back into two braids, and her face was blank. A man with sunglasses stood behind her, intimidating._

_A perfectly composed five year old._

_And there was me. Me and my special grey hair – my dad had called it the colour of dark storm clouds in the day. I had loved storm clouds. Shy and sitting in the the corner, opposite the the stiff girl on the other side of the room._

_That was kindergarten._

_From the very start, it was obvious that she was 'special'. _

_The teacher treated her specially._

"_Are you okay, Amanda?" She would smile, hovering over her even when there were two kids waving their hands for help._

"_If you're tired, you can stop anytime," she would say kindly, although the class had only just started._

"_Why did you push Amanda?" she would yell at a kid who only bumped into her accidentally from an overenthusiastic game of tag._

_All this I observed from my corner, grey eyes looking at her curiously even as the others started disliking her. I had gained a friend by that time, equally shy. We got on well, she and I. I couldn't remember her name now, as after three weeks of being happy friends she had to move away. _

_By then the kids had groups._

_I was all alone. She was all alone._

_Isn't it obvious we would gravitate to one another?_

* * *

There was a soft croon, and a stabbing pain as Falcon gently moved me onto Hawk. It seemed like every move made made the blood come out faster, and the two birds seemed to panic.

I didn't even have the energy to grin.

* * *

_At first we were brought together because when they were grouping in pairs we were always the ones left. We would be awkward in our own childish way, working silently until we needed something like 'what colour do you think goes here?' or 'I'm finished'. But slowly, ever so slowly, we started talking._

_I sat next to her, used to the bodyguard by now. It was lunch. I sat there, missing my friend terribly when she said the first sentence._

"_W-want to come to my house?" she stammered._

_I remember I looked at her. With what expression I don't know, but she looked extremely nervous. It was later that she explained to me her father had said friends invited each other to their house. So technically, she was saying I was her friend._

_Round-about way of implying something._

_I accepted. Of course._

_Her bodyguard looked scary._

* * *

We were soaring amongst black buildings, the moon shone on the ground reflecting Falcon crawling through the air. A bird screech sounded above me, and I looked up to see the a beautiful purple lake.

A jolt cleared my vision for a few woozy seconds.

Falcon was still on the ground.

* * *

_Although we didn't become fast friends like I did with the friend-I-cannot-name, we did steadily become closer. The triggering thing I think was that incident. With grey. Colour. And the first angry face I've ever seen on the prim red-head._

"_Grey's not special," a child sniffed as she stared at my hair strangely, stroking it almost wondrously. "It's not even a colour," she let go of my hair to flick her own brown hair behind her shoulder. "Daddy said so."_

_I plucked up my courage. _

"_M-my daddy says it l-looks like storm clouds."_

"_Storm clouds?" She stared at my hair for a moment before her face twisted. "It looks like those old rubbish bags that mommy dumps."_

_It was the harshest thing I've ever heard in my tiny five-and-three-quarters life. My eyes watered up. I started sniffing quietly, wiping my eyes repeatedly over and over and over and over…_

_Then Amanda came in and saw me, saw her and marched over. Still primly, still properly, but much faster than normal. Kneeling next to me, she whispered in my ear. "What happened?"_

_I hiccupped, before shaking my head. "It's n-not important," I sniffed._

_For the first time, she looked straight at her bodyguard who had entered before her. Her bodyguard immediately answered her. _

"_Patricia told Alice her hair colour wasn't special. Alice said her dad said it looked like storm clouds. Patricia then told Alice that her hair looked like old rubbish bags."_

_Although much of the fancy language blew over my head and maybe Amanda's, she got the gist of it. _

_She snapped up, her face angry. Although my vision was still blurred from tears, I felt a bit amazed. She, who was mostly quiet and blank, was angry for me?_

"_Well, your hair looks like mud!" She yelled at Patricia._

"_Carrot!"_

"_Poo-head!" Amanda yelled instead. "Poo-head, poo-head poo-head!"_

_And there the teacher came in. Of course she took Amanda's side. "Patricia, what did you do wrong?"_

_While the teacher was busy doing that, Amanda lifted me up to the best of her ability. Then she huffed at where my young tormentor was being told off. "Serves her right."_

_I could only smile. We became close over that. _

_But it's so easy to take things much closer to heart when you're a child. The damage was done._

* * *

Hawk screeched, flapping his wings and switching with Falcon, who had perched on a high building. The foreign feeling of being squished was overtaken by a sudden feeling of being dropped. My eyes were closed. I didn't know where we were.

Behind my eyelids, memories were playing like a broken record.

* * *

_I never felt my hair was special again. Grey was just another colour, a normal colour (it was a colour no matter what she said). But having gained a close friend, I wasn't about to complain. Amanda was just shocked, of course, when I cut my long hair into shoulder-length._

"_But it was pretty!" She exclaimed. I shook my head._

"_I like it this way."_

_She shrugged, before happily recounting on something her dog had done. I smiled, before nodding quietly. I think before, she was worried I still hadn't thought of her as friend (she talked a lot more than I did, and apparently her father had also said friends shared things with one another), but soon realised and accepted it was who I was._

_I similarly accepted who she was. But slowly, slowly, she became popular. She had dropped the braids after a suggestion from me, and her bodyguard only picked her up from school now. She smiled a lot more after becoming friends with me, and people quickly recognised her._

_She had lots of friends. They swarmed her, asking her for homework tips, coming to her to gossip, picking her first for sport and such._

_I only had her._

_But quickly my jealousy abated. Even though we had a whole lot less time to have happy quiet lunches together, Amanda had always been the diplomat. She was raised an entirely different way from others, exemplified from her behaviour in kindergarten. _

_She was THE rich kid. No-one knew that back then except me. But that wasn't what made me special. _

"_I love you Alice!"_

"_Hmm?" I looked at her curiously. That was a bit sudden, even for her. She was kicking her legs on my bed. I think I remember my toddler brother crying over something._

"_You're so much more interesting and…" vocabulary failed her as she struggled for a word, "better!"_

_I smiled in amusement. "Wrong grammar."_

"_Who cares?" She smiled, _

"_But how?" I asked her. Amanda raised an eyebrow. "How am I better?"_

_She faked shock before laughing and jumping on my bed. "You've got to find out for yourself now, don't you?" Then she leapt at me. "You would always be my best friend just because of that!"_

"_Of what?" I asked really curious._

_From that, I realised Amanda held me with a strange worth. For the life of me, I couldn't see it. But she did. And that warmed my heart._

* * *

We glided over building, smoother than any possible transport. Visions of that rainy afternoon played, black and white like an old-fashioned film, yellow as if a warm afternoon, bright as if my best friend's smile blinded the whole picture.

There were explosions. I wondered how much time had passed. It already seemed like four-hundred warm afternoons to me…

* * *

_No matter what, days, weeks, months, years passed by. I quickly became known as Amanda's shadowy best friend, and in high school through some unknown means, we were always put together in the same class._

_We grew even closer. I was book-smart. She was book-smart and social-smart. I was her best friend. _

_I felt disgusted that I felt envious of her. Pretty. Popular. Nice. Rich. Whatever she had, was I not her best friend?_

_That envious line grew, although both of us didn't know it grew on both sides. It was a stormy evening when she came crying knocking on my window. My eyes widened from above my homework at how she was balancing on a pretty flimsy looking branch._

_I immediately opened the window, helped her in, tried to stop her from soaking the carpet while rushing about trying to locate the towels from my brother's side of the room. It was lucky that it was Jack's parent-teacher night._

_My grandma, ever the calm one, took one look at my slightly panicked face and a bedraggled, soaked, crying Amanda and immediately starting to make some tea while ordering me to run a warm bath. Running up the stairs to do so, I heard my grandma's calming voice following me, comforting Amanda like she did whenever I had nightmares._

_When the bathroom was steaming, and I had an acceptable hot bath, I called down and Amanda came up considerable calmer, nodding at me with an attempt of a smile and closed the door. _

_I went back down to ask grandma what was wrong with Amanda when the door knocked. _

_Grandma was always the impressive one. Maybe she had heard from Amanda that someone might be coming for her or something. Maybe she just _knew_ with her awesome grandma powers. From the grim set of her mouth, I knew what she was thinking was something she was determined to go through with._

"_Alice, be a good girl and go into the bathroom with Amanda okay? If someone does come knocking, don't let them see her. She must have come to us for a reason after all."_

_I nodded before quietly sneaking up and opening the bathroom door and closing it._

"_Sorry Amanda," I said with my eyes closed to respect her privacy, "but someone's at the door and grandma's suspicious."_

"_Okay," her soft reply echoed. From the crack underneath the door, I heard my grandma asking people to leave, and it was a breach of privacy. They came to the second floor. Stopped at the door._

_I felt like I was in a spy movie. _

"_Who's in there?" _

"_Who are you?" I said cautiously, "You're not my grandma."_

"_Are you Alice? We're searching for your best friend right now. She has run away from home."_

"_What? Amanda has run away?" I said. _

"_Yes. Have you seen her?"_

"_No, but I'll tell you as soon as I do," I tried to say with a bit of worry. The feet stepped away. I grinned back at Amanda, before remembering to squeak my eyes closed._

* * *

No matter how normal a person is, with a rich best friend, there had to be some excitement in life.

I opened my eyes blearily. Was the Choice game over? Was I there yet? I had to get my act together, why was I reminiscing? Strange, really strange… It kind of felt like I was watching all these things happen.

I laughed.

Maybe it was the 'life flashing before your eyes thing'.

Maybe. It was long overdue anyway. I died seven years ago.

* * *

_Envy worked in strange ways. By then, I had developed my indifferent persona to deal with Amanda's other friends. Long accepted I couldn't do anything about them, I just ignored them. I had already accepted the fact._

_I wasn't special. I was normal, just normal. Not like Amanda. She was better than me at everything except for marks which I had to fight long and hard for._

_I envied her. I wished I could be special. But she envied me back. She, special, wanted to be me._

"_I wish I could be you, Alice," she said miserably on my bed, wearing the slightly baggy clothes from my less-than-trendy wardrobe. My curtains were closed, and the lights were off. Just in case. "I feel horrible for saying it, since I know I have so many things," she said, "but I wish I could be you…"_

_That shocked me, but I went over to her and held her hand anyway._

_She never really told me why she ran away._

_I knew one thing though; that was basically my life. Amanda was everything. I was nothing. Normal. For a moment, it had flipped over, but the next day everything had gone like a dream, and I didn't know if what she said was real or just a wishful illusion._

_For I was grey, and she was the passionate red. Nothing could change that._

* * *

I neared where the Flame transportation thing was, where they ultimately had to run to. But I didn't stop there. It was my job to make sure everything was fine.

Although the sky was upside-down, and I was sure I was hallucinating, it didn't stop the next bout of memories.

Nearly there anyway, I thought fuzzily. I could practically imagine Byakuran's nasally voice.

* * *

_I died. I died in a hospital, finding out the miraculous way of saying goodbye to my families, seeing Bill and training with all three Spartan teachers._

_Let it not be said I didn't miss my family. I missed them terribly every day. Stuck in another world I had believed fictional, away from my family and familiar friend, there was no-one to rely on. But there were people who understood, and that was enough._

_It was hard to get motivation at times. So what if I didn't succeed? If I didn't kill anybody, or do anything really wrong I would go to Heaven anyway. Sometimes the memory of my family became so blurred that I didn't really care if I went to Heaven or not._

_Those were the times that really scared me._

_Four years go quickly, and I met Tsuna. H__e was the wimp I expected. Underneath that wimp was a side I never saw when he was a character. It was, however surprising, strength._

_Even when he had been verbally bullied for years and years, he still wanted to prove himself. Primary was revelation. Tsuna was actually strong, no matter what anyone said about 'Dame-Tsuna'._

_I just kept to my job. Look after him. Don't become friends. Keep track of what the other main characters were doing. Get close to some normal people. Get some money. Don't care about anything else. _

_In middle school, I visibly saw Tsuna giving up. It disappointed me, but knew that was the sign. Reborn was coming. And he did._

_Horrifyingly, the crazy events that followed were tiring. Tiring, exhausting, a pain in the neck, and fun._

_Horrifyingly fun._

* * *

Ah, voices filtered through my earpiece yet again. Tsuna was obviously worrying about me, enough to interrupt Shouichi's dialogue. I ignored the stars growing out of the buildings.

"I'm coming Tsuna," I rasped into the earpiece. "Listen to Shouichi."

"Alice!" Came the multi-voiced exclamation.

* * *

_One thing was clear. _

_I had friends._

* * *

Hawk landed heavily, and Falcon shrunk itself, ejecting some Star Flames out. I wrapped them around my torso and used Falcon to push me up. I looked at my position critically. Yes, they wouldn't see my invisible torso like this.

"Yo," I raised a hand even as Tsuna looked up from a heavily wounded Shouichi.

"Alice!"

When he moved to get up, I waved a hand. If he moved, he might see the invisible part. "I'm fine, I'm fine." Nausea was building, "Though those deep gouges got me good, so I won't move from here. It's easier to move with the birds anyway."

Falcon and Hawk agreed with me with loud screeches. From then, the others, although not really taking their eyes off me, continued listening to Shouichi's story. Or my glare forced them to think I was fine.

Some, like Tsuna, did not seem entirely convinced. But when I looked at them, the reluctantly listened. Though one didn't seem intimidated. Reborn looked at me, eyes serious and calculating something as he looked at me. What? What was it?

I closed my eyes to try and build up more energy for my next conversation.

* * *

_They were… unique each in their own way. They were strong in their own way too. And if I was in the group, does that mean that I was unique and strong… in my own way as well?_

* * *

Tsuna's high pitched screeching came through part of my brain.

"Everyone's willing to fight?" He screamed disbelievingly, and I could just imagine his why-the-hell-are-so-many-things-happening-to-ME face going on. But if there was fighting, that meant Yuni. Yuni was here.

Yuni, the cute little kid I rescued from the party was here.

I forced open my eyes, and saw the cute not quite kid the opposite side of the group. Shouichi lay in the middle, still in pain, but generally ignored by the fight-thirsty, the panicked (Tsuna) and the tired. I was the same. Although everyone kept an eye on us, they were content to know that we weren't going to die on them anytime soon.

Which was a good thing of course. Being ignored was a very _good _thing.

Instead of hearing Yuni speak though, a nasally voice came through. Nasally? I think I had that thought before. Yeah. Byakuran. Got to remember that. Blood loss coming through, that's all…

"Well, your Familglia seem to love you so much they would be willing to be burnt and boiled for you though…" Byakuran mused, his eyes still trained on Yuni. Her cloak fluttered slightly, and she closed her eyes and breathed.

"Hostages?" Tsuna exclaimed on the side. Needlessly, but that was Tsuna. If he exclaimed, that meant he understood.

Yuni opened her eyes. Blue, clear blue. The only indication that she felt any tension at all was her pupils, small and sad.

"They'll understand."

Reborn cocked his gun, stroking it, before tilting his head to look at Yuni. His fedora was tilted over his eyes, a sign he was serious. Did he sense the sadness as well? He must have.

I bent over Falcon and groaned softly into his neck. My vision quadrupled. I could taste blood, and under my Flames I could feel the blood, slower now. I breathed in. I couldn't stay here anymore.

With a wave to Reborn and the others, I flashed a grin/grimace and looked up. Falcon had flown to the top of a tower again, and they both switched. Hawk dived and glided, and I wheeled over their heads, knowing that everything was fine for now. What I had been worried about was Yuni's appearance anyway. Belle could have stopped her, but she was here.

Everything was fine.

I sighed in relief, before Hawk getting the unspoken hint to go to where the Vongola base had crashed. The huge metal transportation device was still above it. Good.

Hawk shrunk a bit to fit through the base door, before Falcon came diving in. The two giant birds didn't let me settle on the floor, instead Hawk sat on the floor like he was sitting on a nest while the still slightly smaller Falcon kept me from sliding off and shielded me with a wing.

It was nice and warm.

The next few things were blurry, only I knew there was a huge jolt that the birds shielded me from, panicked shouts before moving me from Hawk's comfortable back to a much harder surface. A few more panicked shouts, hands prodding at my wounds, before quietening to a quiet annoying beep and a soft hand.

"Thank you, Alice-san," Yuni said to me gently, her smile bright but slightly pained and I wondered why when my eyes closed again. Did she know what would happen too?

* * *

_I had friends. I didn't know to accept them or not but… A flash of what I just said to Belle made their way into my memory cinema, and I agreed. Friends they were. And as friends they were accepted._

_Does that mean I had to forget my past friend? My past family?_

_Of course not. I am doing this for them as much as I am doing this for myself and Tsuna & Co. _

_Maybe I understood what Amanda said before. For me, being special to anyone was as strange as a pig flying. I had been special to her. She saw something. And I think I am beginning to see it._

_Maybe my grey wasn't just grey after all._

_Maybe it was a grey the colour of storm clouds…_

* * *

Bill appeared.

"Now look what you've done," he groaned past his cup of hot chocolate. I looked up at him, then down nearly unsurprised to see my prone body next to Shouichi's, Tsuna sitting next to me telling me something.

"What have I done?" I asked, eyes glued to Tsuna and trying to hear what he was saying. And wondering why he was here in the first place.

"I need to talk to you."

* * *

**I have to say thanks to the reviewers! And my readers! I had a lot of new reviewers last chappie, (muahahaha, is very happy) and my regular reviewers too (I love to contrast opinions with the ones that have reviewed more than once...)**

**Review? Highly disfunctional chapter - DO NOT WORRY! IT SHALL BE ACTION FILLED NEXT WEEK! THINK OF THIS AS... AS AN EXPLANATION OF HOW ALICE BECAME HOW SHE IS! Because as you might have noticed, I speed through fight scenes. =="**


	39. You know, midnight visitors are annoying

**Yo! Please do not complain about any mistakes. XD There is a reason - OMG MY ASSIGNMENTS ARE OVERFLOWING AND I HAVE A MUSIC SEMINAR THAT'S FRIGGING TEN MINUTES LONG THAT I HAVE TO DO AND IT'S DUE OF THURSDAY AND I HAVEN'T STARTED YET... **

**Rant over. Yes, I am adapting to senior years very well (please look up sarcasm in the dictionary if you do not understand). I put a day especially aside for you all! XD Please enjoy.**

* * *

Hibari twitched.

Kusakabe, who had successfully chased him down (finally, of course, in a new record of fifty seven minutes – granted that the current Kyo-san had ten years less experience) had found him staring at a shop. Usually, it wouldn't have been anything strange (Kyo-san stared at many shops to see if Namimori was keeping the discipline) but this time…

Was he hallucinating? Maybe he was out of breath. Kusakabe nodded to himself. Yeah, that was it. A lack of oxygen to the head. Because he was sure that what he was seeing now was impossible.

Kyo-san was staring at a hat.

Now, Kyo-san wasn't a very materialistic person. But once in a while he would want something, and so that fact alone wouldn't have been all too alarming. Maybe just a subtle check to see if he had a fever or not. It was the fact that he was staring at…

A woman's hat.

A woman's white, floppy, fake straw, black-ribboned (tied in a pretty bow, of course), _dainty, _sunhat.

Even when Kusakabe gaped in horror that _Kyo-san_ was staring at a woman's white, floppy, fake straw (etc.) sunhat (was it a lack of oxygen that was causing this illusion? He slowly took a few deep breaths. No, that wasn't it), Hibari twitched.

And stared (or glared or observed) the sunhat even closer. He had seen that hat somewhere. Where?

"_Kyo-san," _A low cough came out from behind him. Hibari ignored it in favour of staring at the hat.

Kusakabe was agonising how to sneak Hibari into an ambulance without him noticing. Which, of course, he sighed, was impossible. Just when he was really thinking of approaching him (how would he phrase it? He couldn't imply Kyo-san was girly. He would be killed. Kusakabe shuddered involuntarily), Hibari anti-climatically walked away.

He followed him of course, but he passed the hat as well. And it was his turn to stare for a very different reason. His gaze softened as he looked at Hibari. No, not with pity.

Because he had seen this hat before as well. In a picture in Alice-san's room in Hibari's hideout.

A strange picture, Alice-san lying down on the roof (in the shade) with her eyes closed, wearing a grey shirt and white pants. It was strange because everything in the picture had been in focus except for Alice-san. She had been strangely blurred out.

Yes, she was wearing a grey shirt and white pants.

With a hat. Just like this one. He looked at Kyo-san, who had been intercepted by Dino-san. He looked back at the window.

Kusakabe frowned to himself, before walking into the shop. The teen looked up from his phone to stare at his pompadour with deadpan eyes.

"Yes?"

"I wonder how much for that hat?" Kusakabe pointed at the hat in the window.

* * *

"You were the one that helped me, the first person I knew I could trust outside of my family. Our family had always known who could be trusted with just a look."

A little laugh, a pause interrupted by soft repetitive beeps of a machine.

"I don't know if this will work, but this idea was one that you told me of long ago. All those little things you say are so important after a while. You tried to help without breaking family laws." Soft smiles and stroking a limp hand that seemed too pale for its own good. "And your loyalty. That was one of the things that I loved… no, everyone loved about you.

"You never looked daunted. You've helped me more times than I could count in my past… I've always looked up to you. You helped me get the courage to do the things I've wanted to do, and accept things that are inevitable. But there's one thing I want to say to you, "

Yuni smiled brightly. Painfully.

"Thank you, Alice-san."

She bowed her head. "Thank you so much. I'm sorry."

Yuni stood up, settling the hand gently on the bed before turning around. The door slid open.

"Done?" Reborn asked, a finger playing with Leon's tail.

She smiled. It wasn't a happy smile, or a sad one. But yet, it was a smile with a strange emotion. One that, Reborn reflected, could mean many things.

"Yes."

* * *

Tsuna sat down.

"Alice…" What could he say? He wanted to say so many things. Yell out from that tiny bubble of anger from his frustration? Cry, and stutter something incomprehensible? Stare at her, and make her understand what he was thinking? But most of all…

"Why did you do that for me?" Tsuna asked.

Yes, why did they do it for him? He was Dame-Tsuna, he was no good at anything he did. So why did she stick with him? She was smart, she had charisma, she could fight. She could lead a family of her own!

So why did she stick with him?

Okay, usually he didn't think that much. He was his centre of the world. His world consisted of mom, disappearing dad, school, friends and Reborn (Reborn wasn't really a friend… or someone not in his world. Reborn had a special category of his own).

So why?

"I-I don't really believe you're here just for your mission," Tsuna said a bit awkwardly. "I don't know why, but something tells me that."

Tsuna looked up. "It was only in the Choice battle that I realised how important we were to this world. But it isn't a different world is it? It's our future. It seemed so distant." He frowned and reconsidered his words. "I mean, everyone acted okay with it! Bianchi, Fuuta, Giannini… even Dino-san looked really relaxed and happy."

"But then I noticed how everyone was," Tsuna added morosely. "I was so focused on bringing you all back to the past, I didn't realise how others were feeling. You were avoiding people more than usual, Gokudera was training too much, and Yamamoto wasn't alright at all. But I noticed after Reborn pointed it out, and I just thought I had to bring everyone back to the past."

He dropped his forehead to the bed with a flump.

"It's not that simple anymore." Tsuna sighed into the thin mattress.

"And although I know you can't hear me," Tsuna mumbled before sitting up, "I'll promise you one thing." His eyes looked at the heart monitor connected to Alice. It shouldn't have been there.

"We'll… I'll grow stronger, so that I can protect you. So that I can protect everyone I care about. You're all my precious family."

Tsuna smiled.

"It's a promise."

* * *

So here I was, sitting there awkwardly on one of those plush sofas. It was the third time I came here (much more often than anyone else, I should think. Everyone from before said they only ever saw Bill once in their whole lives, and maybe the second time when they disappeared).

This always seemed to happen. I sipped on my chocolate. Then waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I got tired of Bill just sighing all over the place and generally being a moody teenage girl.

"What?" I said. "You drag me here, and just sit there and sigh for half an hour?"

He threw me a bloodshot evil eye.

"That's it with you humans. Although I like you better than most, you're all just so blunt! Or sneaky! Or polite! Or just plain innocent!"

I pinned a dead stare on him.

"And why is innocent a bad thing?"

He scowled. "I feel bad after I make fun of them. Those people are too pure hearted. Hmph."

"I thought that was a good thing."

"For a person whose only joy is finding new stories and making fun of people, the innocent ones just make you feel bad. And they're not even angels yet. Bah," he grumbled.

I interrupted. "But going back… Why did you drag me here? You muttered something about 'what have you done' didn't you?"

The library dimmed for a second. I blinked in surprise before looking at Bill. His face was unnaturally blank. Before it animated again.

"You two are so annoying…" He looked up at me. "Well, I had a talk to Belle first, see. That's why I'm in such a bad mood. What do you call them people? I think it starts with a b…" He muttered for a while. I sipped the cold chocolate. Patience was key for handling old ladies like Bill.

"Well, she was generally whining and screeching and plotting about how you won the first round. Choice _had_ been her best playing ground. It's just unfortunate that it had been such a short battle after all. Anyway, you have the advantage now, you know?"

He paused. And whipped out a cloth to wipe the table.

"Yes," I mused. "Before, Choice had all been decided by Byakuran's side. Now it's all about them finding us. So technically I have the advantage now. Hmm…"

Bill coughed rudely. "That wasn't what I dragged you here for you know." He shot an irritated glare at me. "What I _wanted_ to say was that you're annoying."

I blinked.

"Yes, you're annoying. Especially annoying. Do you know in how many parallel worlds you've gotten yourself into this fix? Exactly TEN!"

I blinked.

"Yes, TEN! Everyone else has once or twice, or maybe even three times if they're unlucky. But no, you've got to do it TEN times! Are you a masochist? Do you like getting killed that badly? I have a feeling you do. This is the _eleventh_ time I had to do this for you. What the hell?" He paused before bowing his head. "Sorry for blaspheming."

Then he glared at me.

And huffed.

And then slurped cold chocolate, decided he didn't like it, and reheated it with a snap of his fingers.

"Ah, that's better." He grinned at me. "I've got it all out now."

I blinked.

"Err… Dying?"

He scowled. "You nearly died again. Worlds are sentient. Don't do that again, do you hear me? I had to persuade that world you've been living in that you aren't a threat. If it registers that you _are_…"

He paused. I waited. Then got fidgety.

"What?"

He looked at me. "Well, basically it's like the world suddenly hates you. You'll get rainy weather all the time, Murphy's Law would be in effect triple the size, and you won't be able to breathe."

The first two were fine. The last one?

Not so much.

"So, I try hard not to die. Or I get rained on."

"Yup. I healed you too. Just a little bit so you can at least wake up. You need rest, so don't move around too much."

"Cool."

"Yeah."

"Can I go now?"

"Of course you may. Please leave the cup here before washing and disinfect your hands. They look disgusting."

"Well, I'm sorry I had to fight before coming here."

Bill sniffed.

"You should be."

He faded.

And I woke up.

Tada.

This was becoming a habit. I hate being knocked out. I sighed even as I tried to ignore the pain (I was _not_ some hard-core guy) and sit up. There was some commotion outside anyway. I missed those good old days when Tsuna was in primary school.

Sure, everything was boring as hell, and it was really really dull and everything seemed to be bigger than normal, BUT… At least I wasn't getting hit on the head every few minutes.

I sighed. Opened the door. Saw Ryohei and Tsuna and Yamamoto and Gokudera. Waved a hand at Ryohei (the only who could see me). Ryohei raised a hand.

"Yo."

"Yo!" Ryohei replied sunnily. Then blinked. His face turned horrified. He pointed. "Y-you!" And he rushed forward, "ARE SO EXTREMEE! JOIN THE BOXING CLUB!"

I choked in his hug and twitched an arm.

"H-help," I pleaded Yamamoto, the only calm one there (Gokudera was looking at me in shock and calculating something, Tsuna was staring at me like I was a zombie. Which I was, of course. Technically.)

It was Yamamoto's turn to blink. And he smiled.

"Alice!" He laughed, before unwrapping Ryohei's arms and slinging my arm around his shoulders to prop me up. He was such a nice guy. "You're up!"

Gokudera stared suspiciously at me.

"The doctor said that you needed at least a month of intensive care, then six months of recuperation. How come you're up after a week?" His eyes widened. "UMA?"

Tsuna looked weirdly at Gokudera. "Ooma?" He mouthed at Yamamoto, and he just shrugged with a smile. Ryohei was yelling something off into an invisible sunset, and Tsuna looked at me. "Are you sure you're supposed to be up, Alice?"

I smiled and raised an arm to show off a non-existent bicep.

"Yeah, I feel fine."

And then coughed blood over my shoulder. Tsuna's eyes widened.

"YOU'RE NOT FINE AT ALL!"

* * *

"We're returning to the past?" We all stared at Spanner, who just stared just as blankly back at us.

Hibari was standing at the back, and everyone from the past had gathered with Yuni.

I frowned. This was, of course, a good thing. People were injured (me) and it would take time to heal. More time meant more healing and more training. But why only the Vongola crest trial things? I had assumed that without the Arcobaleno trials meant that there wouldn't be this extra anime filler either.

"We can do that?" Haru asked, stepping up in front of Kyoko and I. Spanner looked at her, then looked at the great white machine Shouichi built.

"This machine is the one that holds you all in this time. I've fixed all the errors the best as I could. Didn't Reborn tell you?"

Tsuna shook his head.

"We can go home, just like how we wanted, right guys?" He smiled at the others. There was a brightening of spirits. Another troublesome thing. They hadn't gone back for the Arcobaleno trials, and this time Reborn wasn't here. The conversation was changing into a wrong track.

"It's not what you think," I said from my chair. Everyone turned from their excited chatter to look at me. "Reborn is just letting us train in the past because we don't have time. Because time is malleable in that machine, right?"

Spanner nodded.

"Ten minutes here could mean a week over in the past if we set the program that way."

"We aren't strong enough to defeat Byakuran yet, so Reborn is setting us some tutors back in the past right now. After the training, we have to come back… here." I looked around the ruins of the Millefiore base.

Tsuna and the others stared at me. I nodded blankly. "Didn't you just say that this issue involved us all in the Choice game?" I smiled. "You can't abandon it now. The future still rests on you." I glanced backwards. "You even promised to protect Yuni-chan."

But I looked at Haru and Kyoko, before meeting eyes with Yuni. She would know, I think. She knew the future. We hadn't talked yet, but Yuni had been the one to push my chair with a bright smile.

Because there was still a huge hole to fill – Kyoko and Haru wouldn't need to come back to the future. Actually, everyone would be opposed to it. So how would the future stay on track?

Yuni shook her head. I nodded, before setting it aside for the moment.

"B-but…"

Yamamoto laughed. "Haha, Tsuna! Don't be a worrywart. Remember, we're all in this together!" He slung an arm over Tsuna's shoulders and his eyes took on a sharp gleam. "I promised to change the future with you, remember?"

Gokudera burst out in anger. "Don't be so casual with Juudaime!" He shoved Yamamoto's arm off Tsuna (and Yamamoto just laughed it off) and knelt down in front of Tsuna. "Juudaime! We'll follow you no matter what happens and what you choose! Please don't worry about us!"

"Gokudera, Yamamoto…" Tsuna murmured.

"Yeah, Sawada!" Ryohei roared. "We have to change this crappy future! I wouldn't sit right if I knew this was going to happen!"

"Onii-san,"

"Boss, its fine." Chrome said from behind Kyoko. Lambo screamed he wanted candies in Kyoko's arms. I ruffled his hair and stole a packet of lollies. His eyes widened at me and his mouth opened to scream –

"If you don't want me to confiscate it, then be quiet," I said quietly.

Lambo clamped his mouth shut and sniffed.

"Aw, Alice-chan, don't be so hard on Lambo-chan." Kyoko said, mothering Lambo.

"Stop spoiling him. He'll be useless in the future if you continue to do that." I imagined his fifteen year-old cry-baby self. I had to at least make sure he could handle himself when I left.

"Maybe…" Kyoko said doubtfully. Lambo gave her his best kicked puppy look. She visibly melted. I sighed, before taking out one of the candies in the packet and grimaced.

It was stale.

"I'm dumping this anyway," I said. "Why do you even have this? It's more than three months overdue!"

"Mama gave it to Lambo…" Lambo sniffed out.

I was unsympathetic. "You're going to see her soon. Meanwhile…" I spied a rubbish bin near the wall past Spanner. "Duck, Yamamoto!"

I threw it, and Yamamoto ducked without really thinking. It landed in the rubbish bin with a solid thunk just as Hibari interjected the whole babble.

"Enough. Let's just go." He scowled, visibly annoyed at being in the same room as us.

Spanner nodded. "Ready now." He tapped enter, and suddenly we were glowing green.

"Eh? What's this?" Kyoko exclaimed as she looked at her hand. It was turning white. No chance to answer, as everyone turned into white light and vanished.

* * *

We landed in front of Namimori shrine. To my surprise, Grey was there.

"Miss, what happened?" He eyed the wheelchair in concern, before smiling and taking the chair out of Yuni's hands. She smiled back and let him take over. "We'll have to get you back to the apartment immediately."

"Isn't this your butler, Alice-chan?" Kyoko asked curiously, looking over Lambo's hair.

"Grey!" I said, smiling. "I missed your cooking so much!"

"Not me?" He chuckled, turning the wheelchair as carefully as possible. But due to his well-missed butler-ness, he somehow made it so that there was no jolting at all. I grinned. Chocolate pudding, here I come…

"Wait," Reborn's voice came from the back. He jumped from a tree straight onto Tsuna's head. "Ciaossu."

"Eh, Reborn!" Tsuna exclaimed, trying to peer up at him without letting him fall. "When did you get here?"

"Juudaime!" Gokudera yelled. I didn't know why he bothered. He should have at least become used to it by now… (or maybe he was afraid that Tsuna would get irreparable damage to his poor brain).

"Alice, you can't leave yet."

"Oh yes I can," I returned. "I already know what's going to happen anyway."

"I know you know." Reborn just said. "We just have to clear up on who's going to be your tutor." I shrugged.

"I'll ask one of the other Brighteyes. It should be fine. Let's go, Grey. I miss that annoying fancy bed."

Grey bowed slightly to Reborn. Reborn returned it. "Would it be fine if I tutored her?"

"Maybe. She's the only one without an Arcobaleno tutor."

"I will prepare her to your wish. Please inform me later, as Miss wants to leave as soon as possible."

Reborn narrowed his eyes at me, and smirked.

"Okay." Then he turned to the others, who were trying to split their attention from Colonello and me. I waved, and left. There was no point to hang around unless I wanted to see Vongola Primo and how they cloned him into Tsuna.

I think I would see him at the end anyway. If I didn't, I knew all the places where he would do an after-battle talk when the others finished their Vongola 'exams'. So therefore…

Hanging around was useless. And why prolong my craving for chocolate?

* * *

Yamamoto's phone call ended with a, "Because you left so early, I just wanted to tell you everything, Alice! Haha!"

I munched through another hash-brown. "How was it?" I said with my mouth full. Grey frowned at me over the table, before pushing a bowl of fruit towards me. I said thanks before going back to Yamamoto.

"How was what?"

"Meeting your dad."

A pause. "It was fine! I was so glad to see the old man so lively." Then he tacked on a pretty happy sounding laugh and I flatly told him I wasn't fooled. Yamamoto answered for real this time. "It was strange, nostalgic. It seemed like everything didn't happen." His voice grew hard. "I will prove myself."

"Of course you will," I mumbled, trying to talk through an apple. Yamamoto laughed.

"Haha! Alice, you sound tired! I'll go to the dojo to practice, you go rest but don't go to sleep, okay? You still need to meet that ghost guardian guy!"

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye!" Yamamoto replied sunnily, and the phone clicked shut.

Grey looked at me over his small spectacle things. "I agree. You need rest, Miss. I've checked your wounds, and I'm surprised you're even moving at all."

"But Grey," I whined/protested, "if you heard that you should have heard that I shouldn't sleep!"

"No matter," he dismissed, and pushed me into my room. "And besides, you haven't told me what to do with Jared."

"Jared?"

Then I remembered. The time in the past was technically only… a week or so after Varia. Jared was still chained in my computer room.

"Oh gosh, Jared! The still emo Jared! Is he eating?"

Someone as hardcore as Jared in the past (not future) might have starved himself to death or something.

"He is eating. It seems more like he is lost in thought than anything. I even gave him the liberty to walk around, just in case his muscles get atrophied by sitting still for too long."

"Good." I nodded, before Grey deposited me on the bed and covered me to the chin like I was three. "Just make sure he doesn't escape and everything's fine."

"Of course, Miss. Night."

"Night."

And he switched off the light. Just in time too, since Grey Flames suddenly started pouring out of my Ring, and a corporeal form standing next to my bed started shimmering into existence. It turned into a silhouette about half a head taller than I was.

Alayne Brighteye had shocking green eyes and a smirk rivalling Mukuro's. It wasn't a mean smirk, but it was one of those smirks that you just _knew_ she was a pranker. And a good one too.

That smirk turned into a nervous smile when I just stared at her.

"Err, since you're a Star Guardian that means you're a Brighteye right?"

No answer.

"Well, you just have to prove your determination to help the Famiglia. That's all you need to do really to pass my test, so bye…"

The flames were about to retract when I stopped them. There was an advantage to Flames that could be ordered around.

"Nope." Alayne tensed up and turned around mechanically with a smile. I smiled back. "I have a bone to pick with you."

* * *

"Hey, it wasn't my fault!" She protested, laughing while eating some chips with a big smile on her face. Grey had just come in, saw Alayne, and asked if she wanted some snacks. She said she wanted chips. I raised an eyebrow and asked if Flames were even able to eat.

She shrugged. "You'll never know until you try!" She said, and she tried and realised she could. So currently, she was spraying chips all over my wonderful annoying fancy bed being more annoying than even… Lambo.

Yes, her joyful laugh was _that_ annoying to my back-pained, sleepy ears. Misery loves company.

I did not find such company in Alayne.

"I mean, Giotto is hot, isn't he?" She laughed, talking very much like the modern teenager. Though she looked twenty-something. "He just knew I couldn't say no when he gave me a sack of potatoes with those yellow eyes!" She paused and looked at my fancy bed. "And that cloak. He especially wore that cloak for me."

At least she appreciated the wonders of potato.

I still frowned. She looked at me and laughed. Yet again.

"You're one of those overly serious people aren't you? I love you types!" She lunged over hugged me. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt. "I mean, Qin was just like you. Really, the same attitude and blank look and… that's funny! She had yellow eyes as well. And grey hair. Hmm…" She leaned closer. "Maybe you're a Western counterpart of her or something. That's… _SO INTERESTING_!" she squealed. I winced and rubbed my ear. "Qin did that too," she pointed at my hand.

I scowled. "I'm not here to talk about Qin, whoever that is. I am here to talk about you." I looked at her seriously. "What the heck persuaded you to join the Vongola Family? As a Guardian, no less."

"Because it's awesome of course!" She giggled air-headedly. I scowled.

"You don't seem to be as brainless as that."

She looked at me in surprise before sobering up. "Ah, you're one of _those_ types too. Just like Giotto and Qin. As much as I seem to love you types, I hate it when you see through my acting. It's so annoying!"

I deadpanned. "_You're_ annoying. Talk."

She laughed. Again. Before sitting properly in the bed and eating the chips.

"I was a modern teenager in a world called Alfasobra los Resmeridas. We had flying cars and everything!" She nodded to herself. "It was awesome! But I was murdered, so there you go. Not every world is perfect."

"Murdered," I said with a raised eyebrow. She smiled.

"Of course! I mean, what do you expect? Everyone was practically murdered in my world." At my surprised look, she rolled her eyes. "It was impossible _to_ die without being murdered. Our world had such high medical technology that only a certain chemical could kill us."

And she blew her fringe up. "And who would eat it themselves? Except for suicidal people of course, and I was not in the least suicidal. I was in my beautiful twenties, thank you very much." She sniffed and stuffed a whole lot of chips into her mouth and _munched._ She put normal biting to shame.

"Oh well, I died and went to Bill, which reminds me by the way, is he still wearing what he calls 'twentieth century' clothing? He had a Mohawk the last time I saw him."

My face twisted. Bill… in a Mohawk?

I coughed uncomfortably at the image. "No, he wears quite normal clothing now. And he's bald."

"Oh, shame. Anyway, I met Qin and tried to survive in my little eight year old body. I was ten and a _lot_ more street smart when I met Giotto. Qin was amazing, us first ten Brighteyes were really close you know. But anyway, Giotto was twelve, and he had helped this store that had been beaten up these bad police, and G and Giotto needed help. Qin had arranged for me to be there and so," she shrugged, "I went and helped and we became friends. It's _that _easy."

She rocked back. "Thinking back, it would've been hard to become his friend later on when we became a 'good' mafia." She frowned before squealing and grabbing a pillow. "My cute Qinny is so smart!"

I sighed.

"And? What happened?"

"Well, around when we were… fifteen? I don't really remember… Anyway, Giotto had already started a revolutionary thingy, and I had been refusing to join until one day he came in with blazing orange eyes and this flapping black cloak lugging a very uncool bag of potatoes. Then he presented them to me and asked me if I wanted to join his family!" She laughed. "And after all that I thought, how could I say no?"

I groaned.

"Do you know how your choice affected me?" I mumbled. Alayne leaned forward. "I'm not supposed to join either, but somehow or another I had to!"

Alayne shrugged.

"See, you had to join too." I watched her closely. No matter how she tried to hide it, her personality couldn't fool me. Her eyes were too alert for that to be the case. Her gaze was sharp, nearly on par with Jack, my Spartan Teacher. She was one I wouldn't want to be enemy of. "There were other things other than dear Giotto's hotness that influenced my decision you know."

I sighed, before slumping and wincing.

"So what now? You just go and give me a test, and then I prove I like the Family, and we're done?"

"Yeah. Probably. Gosh, I just love sweet chilli! You know, when I came here they didn't have chips at all. Or artificial flavouring. I nearly died in the first few months, and I had to make do with frying potatoes instead. I got so good with the knife…"

Looking at her, I guess I owed her something. I had held her there against her will, and then forced her to talk after all.

"Want me to get some hash browns? Those are my favourite potato snack."

Alayne looked at me in surprise. "You like potatoes? Hey, that's different from Qin. She hated potatoes because I always smelt like them, and she was always vetoed to sit next to me…"

I had already gotten up from my chair and looked out to call out to Grey.

"Grey, can you prepare some hash browns? I want Alayne to try some."

"Don't move, Miss," he busied as he already popped a few into the fryer. I shot a smile before padding back into my chair. A few minutes later, the hash browns were there, all dried and unoily.

I was moved. Grey was so awesome.

"Hey, what's this?" Alayne poked at it. I picked one up with my hands, and gestured for both Grey and Alayne to eat one.

"You eat one like this." I munched into it, and Alayne picked one up doubtfully before biting into it. "It's best fresh, by the way…"

Alayne had frozen. She reanimated. "YUMMY! I'm so going to bring this back to G, the sourpuss. I'll prove potatoes are better than any lettuce!"

With a wave and a wink, she disappeared along with the plate of hash browns.

I stared at where she had been.

"That plate was Wedgwood, dammit."

Grey just gently patted down the sheets, and neatly shook out the potato chip crumbs onto a plastic sheet that miraculously appeared on the floor. "Now now, sleep Miss. I think you'll have a long day tomorrow."

I reflected. And acceded. "You're right, Grey. Like always."

"Of course. Good night, Miss."

"Night, Grey."

He switched off the light, and the crack of light disappeared. I was just happy to be with Grey again. With him there, it didn't seem our troubles were that big after all… Was this what they called the 'home' feeling?

I smiled, before closing my eyes and sleeping.

And I dreamed of that weird grey room with yellow curtains.

"Hello."

I opened my eyes. And closed them again. Why was I _here?_ In my mind room, or whatever Mukuro called it. And thinking about him, I was just imagining his voice. Yeah, imagining.

"Kufufu, I came all the way here, and this is the reception I get?"

* * *

**Mukuro always comes in so randomly even I can't predict it. And I'm the author. *sigh***

**I was so happy! There were reviews (and look! We hit the 900 mark! Good job guys... honestly, when I started this, I thought I would hardly get to chapter forty, and get more than two hundred reviews or something... I LUB YOU ALL!)**

**I claim copyrights to Alayne's world! XD And please tell how you thought of this. I'm getting back into my non-emo groove~**


	40. , dream visitors are a pain in the butt

**I'M SORRYYYY! …FULL AUTHOR'S NOTE DOWN THERE**

* * *

"Kufufu… I come all the way here and this is the reception I get?"

I groaned. "Mukuro… am I dreaming?"

Wait. That was exceedingly cliché. And implied, if read out of context, I was actually overjoyed to see Mukuro. I shuddered. Never. Whatever natural charisma he had, he was just plain, I glanced at his smiling face, _creepy. _I mean, look at his eyes! Or his nose! He had a perfectly straight nose! Definitely a strange phenomena…

"Well, of course you are." He laughed that creepy laugh of his again, and I just sat up and sighed. Yellow curtains, weird bubble writing in the sky, grey doorless room… Yep, that was my 'mind room'.

"You never come here for a talk. What is it this time?"

"Just a favour."

"Again?"

Mukuro smiled. "Why, what's with that tone? You hurt my feelings."

I sighed. Yeah. Whatever. I don't think Mukuro would really get hurt over anything except Mafia related stuff. And that would only be his pride. I mean, he didn't really mind fighting with Tsuna apparently, only Chrome said he would sulk for a few days afterwards. And hatch a few world-domination plans involving violent deaths for Tsuna.

Really. With Hibari being a sulky prideful kid, Mukuro (the same) only power obsessed, Reborn being a literal baby, Gokudera childish to UMAs, Tsuna being childlike and wimpish in general… (unless in Dying Will Mode, of course) I was making the general impression they were kids in bodysuits.

Body suits made me think of fat suits.

…Reborn in a fat suit?

Outside my window, Reborn jumping around with a Leon umbrella and a fat-suit eclipsed the sun for a second. I widened my eyes. Oh the horror…

Mukuro's eyebrow twitched.

"Can you at least pay attention to me when I talk?"

I looked at him. "You were talking?" This time his whole face twitched. "Sorry, my mind seems to wander easier when I'm in here…"

"Tell me why I haven't been able to contact my dear Chrome for the past few days."

My face immediately became serious instead of horrified (since fat-suit Reborn had been joined with Fat-suit Hibari. My eyes had burned, I tell you. BURNED).

The sky outside turned cloudy, and a hurricane blew Reborn and Hibari over the moon. The others were clinging onto random trees.

"Why do you think I'll tell you?"

"So I can go into your debt again? You seem to like collecting those. First the," his nose wrinkled, "skylark, then you've been collecting debts left and right. Favours are very very precious."

"Why don't you ask Chrome? Can't you just hack into her mind? I don't think she'll mind, if it's you."

"Kufufu… and lose my image of a caring, gentle older brother?"

I snorted. "Can't imagine that."

He shrugged, twirling his trident. "I'm a good actor." Then his eyes sharpened, and all who knew Rokudo Mukuro would know he meant business. Maybe he thought I wasn't truly Mafia, if he kept coming to me. Which is true, for Brighteyes aren't technically Mafia. We were an information company, so to speak. An expensive one.

Which reminds me…

"You're asking information from a Brighteye without offering pay?" I raised an eyebrow. "Simple etiquette, isn't it?"

Mukuro smiled. "How very like a Brighteye to ask for money. I'm believing to think you have a promising future as a business tycoon in front of you. But I can give you payment, if not by conventional money means. Payment is a favour, and a way to contact me anytime."

I raised my eyebrow even higher.

"The first one we talked about, and it's a good payment for me. But the second one is beneficial for both of us, isn't it? You can contact me for any information you want, as long as you have money, and I can contact you for my favour. It's leant towards your side, isn't it?"

Mukuro shrugged. "Your choice."

I shrugged. "I don't much care for money anyway." Mukuro's eyes gleamed and he held out a hand. I shook it. "Deal."

_He would know about it later anyway, from his future self's memories…_

Leaning back into my chair, I recounted. "It started when the Arcobaleno Reborn got shot by the Ten Year bazooka." Mukuro gave a surprised twitch. Even he knew Reborn could dodge such a large unwieldy thing easily. "There was no future Reborn that came back. Tsuna, who was with him at the time…"

At the end, after I had told him about why were in the past again, he was frowning.

"Byakuran… He seems a familiar name." He looked up at me and managed another creepy laugh. "Kufufu, you have given me ample enough information. And here's how you can contact me." He stood up and gave me something strange and red. "You can call me and ask me the favour you want," he said smoothly, "I can't hear your thoughts with this, so you will have to speak aloud. I can likewise contact you. It isn't a phone, but… I don't care to explain it."

I scowled. This strange red thing was my payment and I didn't even get an explanation?

My face brightened for a second. "You're just like Hibari," I sighed as I looked at the red thing in my hand, "he never bothers explaining either."

Mukuro's smile twitched. "I assure you, I have nothing in common with _that_. Anyway, I have to go now, or Vindicare would get suspicious."

He disappeared.

I woke up.

Lovely. Sighing, I set the red thing to the side and looked out the window. Damn Mukuro. The sun was just rising, dammit.

* * *

Think of my surprise (annoyance? Irritation?) when the first test wasn't Yamamoto's. It was mine.

But then, we should go back in time. It was strange really, how the morning (that didn't follow cannon at all) didn't ring any bells in my head at all.

Really. And I expected myself to protect Tsuna?

The morning was normal. All was nice and dandy; I had been called to a meeting at Tsuna's house. We were all sitting there, and Reborn hopped onto the bed and sat next to me (I had settled myself of the bed because Tsuna and the others had taken the floor. There wasn't a cushion on the fourth space, and I wasn't particularly fond of sitting on hard surfaces for extended periods of time…).

"Haha!" Yamamoto laughed with his hands behind his head. He wasn't even squinting at the sun which was shining right into him. Or maybe Tsuna's hair was protecting his retinas (Tsuna needed a haircut). "It feels so nice to be back!"

"Baseball freak," Gokudera muttered without any heat behind the words, "don't forget about what we're back here for."

I raised my head from where I had been staring at a sunny patch on Tsuna's table. "I agree with Yamamoto. I missed Grey."

"Freaky eyes," he bantered back, "you shouldn't forget our mission either!"

I shrugged. "Well," I started. Then for some reason, Tsuna cut me off (…most probably because these types of 'normal' arguments between Gokudera and me always turned into conversations with pretty fireworks and crumbled walls).

"W-well," Tsuna stuttered, "we did come here to talk about it right?"

I looked at Reborn, who had just been sitting there like any normal black-suited baby. "Yes. Lambo cried about an apparition in his toilet last night. Anyone else?"

"Reborn-san!" Gokudera immediately perked up and said. "Last night the Storm Guardian appeared out of my Ring to ask me if I had the determination to pass his test!" He beamed and shoved his face into Tsuna's. "Don't worry Juudaime! You can rely on me!" Tsuna smiled nervously and leaned away with sweat running down his forehead.

Yamamoto nodded. "Yeah, I was practicing in the dojo when Asari-san appeared. He looked pretty similar to me!" He laughed.

I raised an eyebrow. Yamamoto noticed?

Reborn looked at me, and I nodded. "Yup. She came." He nodded, before continuing.

"You will be here until hopefully all of you pass the First Generation Vongola's tests." Reborn's eyes roamed around the room. "Don't worry; time passes differently from here to the future. If it all works out correctly, after all our tests have been passed, it would only be ten minutes in the future."

Tsuna puzzled in out in his mind. "But how does that work?"

Reborn smirked at him. "Do you want to learn?" He had that gleam in his eyes again, that evil gleam that Tsuna already learnt (from many hard lessons) that _it would not bode well_. For him anyway. He'll just go into hospital for another few months or so, which of course, wasn't the point of coming back to the past.

"N-no?" Tsuna squeaked, his voice coming out as a question at the end. I slowly flopped backwards (stomach injury here) to hide my incoming laughter.

"Oh well," Reborn said as he jumped over the table to go out the door, "I'm hungry. I'll ask Mama what she has for snacks." He toodled off, exuding smug beams at Tsuna's despairing cries of "_what about the meeting?"_

Without Reborn, it was mostly silent. I watched the curtains blow inside the room, before being sucked back outside. A bird chirped. Yamamoto shifted, staring at us before laughing.

"This feels like the old days again!" He said, flopping backwards too. I slowly raised myself up with my arms with a raised eyebrow. Gokudera stared at Yamamoto strangely. It was Tsuna who voiced the question.

"Huh?"

"Oh, I mean, isn't this the original group?" He pointed at us. "Gokudera just came to school playing with Tsuna, and I dragged Alice to say thank you to you." He pointed at Tsuna. "And then we became friends!"

Gokudera spluttered. "How dare you point at Juudaime?" But I noticed that he didn't deny the _friends_ part. He was in denial like that.

I looked around, before smirking to myself. So I had become one of the 'originals'? I frowned afterwards. Wait, that's not good. Of course I feel accepted and warm and all and it was true, but… I sighed.

They would just be hit harder, wouldn't they…? I looked at them from under some hair. I smiled wryly. What did I say about these thoughts?

Everyone's doing living. They're training because they know when they fight they might die if they don't become strong. But they're still living. Everyone lives knowing they would die. I had no right to separate myself from them.

I nodded. Yup, that's what I would do.

Reborn came back in carrying a few biscuits and a coffee on a green Leon tray. He hopped onto his leather couch and proceeded sipping, feeding a biscuit to Leon while he was at it.

"So, let's continue. We all know that today the trials have already started. The Family might be watching you even now." Everyone's eyes sharpened in different ways. Gokudera started trying to look impressive and angry, Yamamoto's eyes took on his serious gleam, and Tsuna started sweating.

I closed my eyes.

"Remember the tutors? They'll meet you at your home. Dismissed." Reborn shrugged, and turned towards the open window. "I have to meet Ryohei anyway."

Leon plate turned into Leon jet pack and he flew out.

"Well," Yamamoto heaved himself up to his feet, "I'll go and start training then." He flashed a grin, and we could hear his laugh echo up from the stairs. Gokudera leapt up after him.

"I can't let that baseball freak beat me! Juudaime, please watch how I will improve!" He zoomed out, and left me and Tsuna. I closed my eyes again.

Tsuna fidgeted. I knew he fidgeted. He was too much of a nervous person not to fidget with a _girl_ in his room.

"Don't fret Tsuna," I said slowly as I levered myself up. "Imagine me as one of the guys."

He looked at me with those watery eyes that just screamed _'and how do you want me to manage THAT?'_

I sighed. "Ah well," shrugging and sliding down onto the vacated pillow, I scowled at the sunshine. "How's it going with Kyoko?"

Genuinely curious, I looked at Tsuna's facial expressions. He blushed a deep red. Actually, so red that I was actually a tiny bit worried – would he faint or something?

"It's f-fine," he stuttered, "Kyoko is being nicer to me now… And we talk! I mean," he hastily corrected, "she talks, and I try not to trip over my feet…"

I raised an eyebrow at his answer, before bursting into laughter. Which hurt my stomach, so I tried to stop, only to look at Tsuna's face and start laughing again. "This from," I pinched my cheek to stop laughing (_paaain)_ "the supposedly strong badass future Vongola boss?"

He looked at bit affronted. "You don't need to laugh, Alice!" he whined. "I'm serious!" Then he proceeded to thump his head on the desk with his ears bright red.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I spluttered. "It was just… your _face…"_

Eventually, he looked up with a sheepish smile. "Haha… At least someone is laughing. Everyone seems so serious these days."

I shot him a thumbs up. "You don't have to redeem yourself…" Tsuna just looked at me strangely. I gave another shrug, before leaning forward. "Okay, I'll tell you what to do next time you see Kyoko. I'll guarantee you'll get at least some friendship points or something."

Tsuna looked, funnily enough, eager. "Yeah?"

"You know how girls think… wait, you're not a girl. Okay, there's a saying in the female side of the population that you get guys through their stomach."

Tsuna's eyes were wide. "Th… their stomach? Literally?"

I sensed some misunderstanding vibes in the air. Maybe he thought literally cow guts or something. "No, no, as in, you get their hearts through food. That's why in those shoujo mangas the girls always try to cook the male lead something, yes?"

"Oh!" Tsuna nodded in understanding.

I raised an eyebrow. "Tsuna… you read shoujo mangas?" As he turned red (yet again) I just continued. "Okay, so it's the same for girls. Only a lot messier. Guys invite girls out to restaurants for a _reason_ you know?"

"But isn't that a date?" His forehead creased in a contemplative frown.

"It depends I guess," I shrugged. "I mean, coming from you Kyoko would probably only think it's a friendly dinner or something."

Tsuna drooped. "So on that 'friendly dinner' you have to make an impression! That's the key to success! And what you do there is complimenting. Compliment her clothes, her shoes, her hair, her eyes if you're feeling brave."

In response, he looked like he was choking. I paused and reconsidered. Yes, I knew I was meddling, but as he needed a push. Seriously.

"Alice-san," an amused voice from the door, "are you really giving Tsuna relationship advice?"

"Yes," I nodded as I took Tsuna's hand. He went red faster than a cooking lobster. "I mean, I'm not even Kyoko and he does that. How is he supposed to talk to the love of his life?"

Yuni's eyes twinkled. Ah, the irony.

"I'm sure Tsuna-san would do fine. Don't you have your own tutoring to do?"

"Nah, I'm fine." Shrugging, I grinned down at Tsuna. "I wonder if you should wear gloves? Sweaty hands aren't appealing you know…"

I raced down the stairs as fast as I could, ignoring Yuni's giggles and Tsuna's suddenly very white face as he actually _seriously_ contemplated what I said. I was tempted to chuckle evilly.

Teasing Tsuna was so fun_…_

I gave a mad grin to a random passerby, and they ran away shrieking.

Ah yes, it was fun.

* * *

Grey didn't really give me much training at all. I think he stepped in only to soothe Reborn's fears. Though, I thought as I snapped shut a horrifyingly interesting teenage romance novel, I did need to get stronger. Belle had only been playing with me, and yet I still got a near fatal injury.

I needed to get much much stronger.

But… I contemplated my training and procrastinating with the book. I mean, they were up to the part where the Natsuko was running away from Akira because he had seemingly been cheating with two girls at once – only they were his sisters, and she didn't know.

Cough. Let me redeem myself. The plot wasn't that original, but for some reason the stupidity just drew you in…

"Miss," Grey said as he cracked open the door. "We should change your bandages."

"Okay," I said as I sat up. "Is training still on?"

"Yes," Grey nodded as he started setting up the table. We were mostly silent throughout the exchange as I read the book over Grey's head, and he was testing if he was wrapping the bandages too loose or not.

"Miss's training would be this," he said as he handed me a book. A book? "I'm well aware you haven't finished mastering the techniques in the chopstick book, but I couldn't help you with those. But we will be going through basic martial movements today."

"Martial arts huh… Like, kicking and flying through the air?"

"No, the very basics of how to throw a punch, one type of kick, and one type of throw. Those moves you just mentioned are very advanced."

"Oh. Sounds interesting," I said as I reluctantly put down my novel. "Let's start?"

As I stood there awkwardly, Grey tutted. "Your stance is already wrong Miss. You need a stable stance at least, so that I can push you at any angle and you can still support yourself." Then he gave me a gentle push from my right, and I toppled right over.

I sighed.

This was harder than I thought it would be, eh?

And I was so interested in what would happen next. And curious of what would happen with Tsuna, since the relationship advice that I had given Tsuna had come straight out of the book.

Maybe the book universe could translate into real life – I mean, Natsuko and Akira did get together… But then, of course, there were the four love rivals and…

"Miss, concentrate!"

* * *

That night, Alayne popped into existence again. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she just grinned and waved the plate. "Haha, yesterday I forgot to give you back the plate. Sorry, sorry…"

I just shook my head.

"It's fine."

She put it down and grinned.

"Oh yeah, G finally admitted that potatoes could taste nice! I don't get his fetish with lettuce really. It's tasteless! Though I wish Qin could have been here… We've been arguing about that with her refereeing for such a long time."

"Mhmm," I nodded as I flipped the page.

"Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that tomorrow I'll be giving you your test. Remember to show your loyalty!"

I widened my eyes.

"What? I thought Asari would be going first!"

"Eh? Asari? He's going second. We drew lots you know, and since I cheated I get to go first."

Before I got the chance to stop the Flames from disappearing, she waved and dissipated.

I scowled, irritated. Why was I first? I hate going first. It's best to go with the flow and try not stand out. And the plot! Is it a good thing or a bad thing that I was going first?

…Wait, Alayne cheated?

I scowled even harder, making up my mind to have a _long_ talk with her later.

* * *

The next day, I woke up to silence.

"Hello?" I said, knowing this was _more_ silence than usual. No computer whirring next door, no quiet Grey shuffles in the kitchen. Stepping out of the room carefully, I made sure my chopsticks were stuck tight in my hair, another pair in my right even as I did my last button up. "Grey?"

More silence.

Looking out the window, I was surprised to see cars and traffic and everything – birds chirping, people yelling, the tiny gardener at the bottom snipping away just like usual. Only…

I couldn't hear anything.

_'Catch me if you can~'_

* * *

_**A Grey Special – 1**_

_His parents named him Gris because of his grey hair. Very original, because Gris meant grey in French, and he was born in France. He was a… relatively normal kid. Had a bit more passion for operas than his parents expected in an eleven year old child, but they did say everyone was special in their own way, so acceptance was key._

_Anyway, Gris was passionate about operas. But he had never thought himself strange, because whenever he sat down for an opera, he would always see another child, around his age that sat in the rich people boxes. One would ask, how did a little boy always notice another person? Unless he had photographic memory of course, which he surely didn't._

_Well… her eyes glowed in the dark._

_That was little Gris's first encounters with a Brighteye._

_The first time he talked to her was around… after another three operas. He had been leaving, just like normal, when a person went and invaded the stage where stage-hands were obviously still cleaning up. The intruder ripped open the curtains, and started ranting about the _iniquité_of the world, where people could waste their money on performances while other people lay starving on the street._

_And Gris could never forget how the girl just leaped over the railing from the rich people box and made a flying kick to his back. A sickening crack and thud, and she was standing over the guy. She was _joli_, and her eyes, when she looked up, were a shining grey._

_From then on, Gris knew he had fallen in love. _

_Running up to the stage and climbing up awkwardly, he ran up to the girl. "_Sensationnel_!" he cried, waving his arms around excitedly, "How did you do that? I mean you jumped, and landed, and,"_

_The girl patted his head absently. "Kid, don't get too close." And she jumped away, leaving an awestruck Gris behind._

_His next encounter with the girl of his dreams wasn't so pretty. Gris had tried to make a point of locating her every single time he went to a new opera, but didn't succeed in talking to her ever since that time with the stage. A man had apparently seen their exchange on the stage though – the next thing he knew his house was on fire. He was hiding outside when it happened, and he heard what the man said to his parents._

"_I know you have a son that goes to operas," he snarled. "He talked to that Brighteye bitch, didn't he? What's his relation to her?"_

_His father's voice was strong. "I don't know what you're talking about. My son enjoys going to operas, but he hasn't told me anything about a Brighteye, only that he had found his first childhood crush. There has been no relation between – "_

_A sickening crack, and then his mother crying, "Dear! Dear, are you okay?"_

"_You don't want to give information? It's fine; I can't let you tell the authorities my face anyway." Then heavy footsteps and Gris was crawling towards the door again when it got kicked open. He lay flat against the wall, looking through a crack in the wood door. The only thing he saw was a ring with _abeilles_, and then a flash of red._

_An explosion. Gris leapt out from behind the doorway. "You… you _merde_!" He screamed out at the back of the man with the ring. The man looked back, and saw him. His eyes widened, and he turned back towards him when suddenly…_

_The girl was there, a gun in hand and another in front of him. "You know you can't face me," she said, her long brown hair in his face. He couldn't see anything except for the glow of his house from his left. His house… and his family._

_He felt himself become cold as he started to shake. The hair moved a little, and he knew the girl had glanced down at him. A gun shot, and the shadow of the man with the ring ran away limping. Then, the girl took him and she ran, he stumbled, to a place that seemed too far away. Bundling him into the carriage, the girl looked down at him._

"_He's going into shock. Get him to the mansion and don't let him die. I like idiots like these types."_

"_Okay. You better pay me after this, Turchino."_

"_Don't call me that. I hate that name."_

"_Quelle que soit."_

* * *

"_My name is Turchino. Are you willing to serve me as your boss for your revenge?"_

"_Turchino?"_

"…_It's Italian."_

"_Oh."_

"_Well?"_

"_I'm not really that interested in revenge, really…" A sniff. Then a whack on the head, and Gris looked up to see Turchino, the girl with the _gentil_ grey eyes had whacked him with a newspaper. _

"_You're a boy aren't you? Man up. I'm partially responsible for your _famille_, and I have to bear responsibility somehow. If you're going to accept you're going deeper in the underworld than you would expect."_

_Gris was kind of confused. She looked twelve, but she sure wasn't acting like it._

"_Okay then," he nodded. "I'll be your employee. What am I signing up for?"_

_The girl in front of him gave him a mad grin. She leaned back and crossed her legs, waving her hand for… champagne? She was sure not holding up to his expectations. Somehow he imagined a gentle, town girl who had a rich daddy or something. Not an underworld alcoholic at the age of twelve._

"_You know why those bad people were after me?" she said as she inhaled… Gris's eyes widened. It couldn't be… a CIGARE?_

_She was a smoker as _well?_ Turchino leaned back, mad smile still on her face. _

"_I'm the boss of the underworld police force in France. Of course those bad guys were after me." _

_Gris's eyes widened. He'd heard of them. They were the police force that everyone relied on, as people couldn't be sure that the normal police weren't corrupted. But they had unconventional means, didn't they?_

"_So am I expected to kill?" He said waveringly._

_A flash of pity. "Yeah. Later. But what's important now is that," she spread a random map on the table. "We're targeting a crime organisation that's spread from Paris to Chalon-sur-Saône. They're trying to reach Aix-les-Bains. See?" She traced the map, "This pretty little town is right on the road to that spa town. We're trying to stop it."_

_She took another deep drag._

"_We may or may not find out who killed your parents though. Now that you know what you're going into, want to join?"_

_He looked up at her mad urchin grin and gave a smile of his own._

"_Okay."_

* * *

**The FRENCH**

**Iniquité – grand injustice  
Joli – pretty/nice/lovely  
Sensationnel – sensational/terrific/out of this world  
Abeilles – bees  
Merde – shit  
Quelle que soit – whatever/regardless  
Gentil - gentle  
Famille – family  
Cigare – cigar**

**The ITALIAN**

**Turchino – Deep blue**

* * *

**Well, haven't seen you all for so long!**

**Sorry. I'll update next week, since it's the holidays! XD People were wondering about Grey's past, and I was like, OKAY, EXTRA TIME! Because I solve everything with Extras. Haha?**

**I hope you enjoyed it. And please review! I'm kind of iffy if I did Grey's introduction right. I mean, he was VERY different from the guy he was now. Haha… I'M SORRYYYYYYYY FOR UPDATING SO LATE!**


	41. I hate my life

**Yo! Full author's note on the bottom - the atmosphere is REALLY different this time. I hope you enjoy it though! ^^ (special note... OMG 950 REVIEWS *spazzes and dies*)**

* * *

Grey was in the kitchen. He said something with a grin, holding a plate full of hashbrowns, pancakes and sausages. With syrup. I opened my mouth, to say something back (I mean, I heard myself when I was calling for Grey in the hallway right?) and then found out I couldn't even hear my own voice now.

Great.

It seemed that Grey heard whatever strange sound coming through my throat and frowned worriedly. His lips moved, Adam's apple bobbing. I think, if I read his lips correctly, that he was saying if I was sick.

I shook my head, and went to the notepad next to the phone and wrote

**Trial started for me – Please don't ask. Something to do with us coming back. I will need to contact the others soon, and I think the trial involves something with the senses. I am temporarily deaf. Please don't panic.**

After that lengthy note, I gave it to Grey and he looked over it and nodded. He gestured to the plate that he had set on the table, before bringing a glass of apple juice. I kind of wanted to laugh.

I ate anyway (I mean, if Grey's mothering instincts were so great that he still made me eat breakfast after I told him I got a trial that made me deaf… well, can't resist that) and waved a goodbye. He waved too, gently pushing a small whiteboard with some whiteboard markers into my hand.

I stared at them. Wow, where did he get this from?

'Take care, Miss,' I think he said. I smiled to reassure him, and tried to get used to being deaf.

It's a strange experience. A bit scary too, because what sight doesn't cover, sound does – to an extent. Imagine walking in a dark car park, and standing there in complete silence. It's just not right. Not normal. Associating silence with danger and enemies, I was tense. So I tried to relax.

And not glance over my shoulder every two seconds. Because there were no people following me. Really. Paranoia and all that.

When my stomach twinged for the twelfth time in three minutes because of me tensing and turning around wildly, I _really _tried to relax. Maybe I really should have kept up with practice. If I was fit, I might feel I was in less danger. My arms were… I poked them. Err… they weren't that in shape.

Ah… that would come when I wasn't injured in some way. Really, I collected more injuries than any other person in the family… excluding Hibari, since he always seemed to hide injuries from fights, and Ryohei from his boxing.

I walked down the driveway, once again hit by the silence of it all. There were birds that looked like they were positively screaming their lungs out; the kind gatekeeper said a hello (which I nodded back).

Life without sound was unnerving, to say the least. If I didn't know this was temporary, I would go mad.

Total silence does that. In that type of silence, it buzzes around as your ears tried to find some noise, any noise at all… then you realise nothing was there. Then it smothered.

I was up to the buzzing stage without the buzzing. Because that would be a type of sound wouldn't it?

Tch. I scowled. Why did Alayne make me go deaf anyway?

Successfully walking out of the rich people districts, since the hotel was right next to Namimori's equivalent of the CBD, I walked straight into the shopping area.

Walking down the street was unnerving. There was no sound. People were talking, yelling, _laughing_ and I couldn't hear it at all. Disconnection was the first thing, with a bit of loneliness. If I closed my eyes, I would believe that no-one was here. I never actually realised how sound was _important_, you know?

First things first though, pushing momentary feelings aside. Tsuna's house. It would be the first step. And really, I don't think Tsuna would be awake yet, since it was really early and all (which reminds me of Grey's abnormal perfectness, because I woke up really early today and he still had breakfast ready).

The shops were opening, and people called greetings to one another.

It was so perfectly normal, the scene. It was like watching a movie with all the sounds muted. _Normal_ people walked over to one another, talking presumably about _normal_ things like the price of potatoes or something. People _normally_ walked together, talked together, smiling more often than not.

Such strange images were distracting. Yet again, the new silence had me thinking. I couldn't appreciate it all without thinking.

How could people ever disturb peace?

I was musing about this and the total difference in atmosphere _I kept remembering deserted streets, scared faces in windows staring at black suited Millefiore operatives, dilapidated warehouses and more stress than I would ever want to feel again _when there was a sudden movement from an early jogger that made me alert.

Not much. It was just a flicker of a glance to his left, and a sudden quickened pace. It was amazing what a person would pick up without sound. It was as if I was so _aware_ of how silent it was my body was trying to adjust. I could definitely feel adrenaline.

Actually feel it. For the first time. And it was true, frowning to myself. It was a rush. But whatever.

I peered into the alleyway. Typical alleyway. Behind a bar, some dirty looking doors, rubbish bins and crates stacked next to red brick walls. I frowned. Nothing seemed abnormal.

Stepping in (because being with Tsuna had made me mad – and I think curiosity would kill the cat again) and walking around the corner, it was then I saw it.

Hibari. It wasn't strange. Normal. But not if Hibari was blindly walking into walls like that.

I made to call out to him. Say "Hibari" maybe, but what I felt in my throat felt so strange that I stopped immediately. His head snapped up though, face towards me tenser than I've ever seen it before. I took out my whiteboard and scribbled something on it.

Maybe something neutral.

**Hibari, what are you doing?**

Yes, that worked. I nodded to myself, before showing it to Hibari, tucking the marker back into my pocket. The sun had nearly still been over the mountains. It had risen a bit more now, letting some warm light into the alleyway filled with dust. And weird smells that I would rather not identify.

His tonfa flashed as he took a step towards me, just to trip on a can and crash into the red brick wall.

This… was definitely not Hibari.

Imposter! Or maybe he was injured? But that didn't explain why he was pointing his tonfa at me with a glare. Or trying to glare. He was glaring over my shoulder. And why he was stumbling. Hibari never stumbled. Even when he was heavily injured.

My eyes narrowed. Maybe?

I stepped closer, and waved my hand in front of his eyes. He did nothing to express he saw it. Leaning nearer to his face, it was then I saw it.

There was a grey speck in the middle of his pupil.

Trial… Loyalty? Alayne was a Brighteye, grey. Grey flames, loyalty meant family, I had to stick to my family and that's why I was going to Tsuna's house but then I'm deaf and suddenly Hibari seemed like he was blind.

Blind. Grey flames in his eyes making him blind? I didn't really want to tamper with it. It was _in_ his eye.

I gently tapped his hand. He jerked his tonfa up, and with great difficulty I stopped it (ow), held it and tried to speak, at least form some words. Even if it sounded demented, I was sure I could say 'Hibari'.

So I said it.

"Hi…bari."

His arm was relaxing, he might have recognised my voice. Good. That was good.

His mouth moved. "Sunglasses?" I think he said. I'm not sure.

Japanese for yes was easy to say. "Hai." That weird vibration in the throat again. I _think_ it got across.

He straightened up, back stiff and proud (he was obviously kind of embarrassed that he was caught in this state – and we all know that embarrassment turns into annoyance and therefore anger for Hibari). He turned his face away, and I think he said something.

Huh?

I tapped his hand. He turned, a frown marring his face. "You," I saw his lips move, "go away. I can handle it by myself."

In return, I grabbed his hand and tugged him away out into the street, and going to the first person (a nice lady shopkeeper) I quickly scribbled on my whiteboard, erasing what I wrote previously with a sleeve. She stared at my strangely, wanting to get back to stocking apples.

It didn't really make sense. I grimaced at what I wrote, before looking up to the woman again. Forcing a smile, I held up my board and indicating to Hibari while at it.

**We're playing a game, and my friend here is playing blind, but I just came back from an operation and I can't hear anything, so he can't understand me. Can you tell him that I can't hear what he's saying?**

The nice lady read what I said and nodded, saying something to Hibari. Nervously, of course. Impressive how Hibari, even when blind, could stare impassively down his nose and make you feel less than an ant.

When the lady seemed finished, I bowed a thank you with a big smile, and she just smiled back and her eye positively twinkled when I grabbed Hibari's hand again to move.

His hand was warm.

He was stiff, and strangely he wasn't frowning. I dismissed it. Priority was to quickly go to Tsuna's house so that there could be communication at least. Whiteboards didn't do anything against a blind person. I sighed again (troublesome) and tried to stop blushing.

Hey. Puberty, teenager remember? I was holding a guy's hand. If you discounted Jack and my dad, I have never even touched a boy, other than random pats on the head for Tsuna, and you know, the usual friendly punching.

Gah. I was holding _Hibari's _hand. Why wasn't he hitting me with tonfa? Granted, I was trying to slink through alleyways and streets I knew were mostly deserted because he had a reputation to fulfil.

It was after about five minutes that Hibari finally shook off the hand, and said something along the lines of 'I can walk by myself'. I think. His lips moved, at least.

I sighed.

And what did Alayne say? Catch her?

How the heck would I catch her when we couldn't even _communicate_ –

A head of white hair came running towards us. My eyes brightened. Ryohei! And his morning training! I waved madly, and Hibari jerked his head towards the first foreign pair of footsteps since the kind lady.

We had gotten to the suburbs now, and no-one was up. It was pretty silent. I think. I wasn't really the one to ask right now…

Ryohei saw us together, and he grinned. And waved. And then did this weird wiggle thing while trying to say… something? I stared at him blankly.

Then I took out a whiteboard.

**Ryohei, I'm deaf right now. Hibari has gone blind, and I think it has something to do with my trial because it started this morning.**

I showed it to him, and he read it and nodded. Then he screamed something in the air.

Or seemed to. Hibari didn't react at all to a random scream, which is pretty suspicious. Hibari… looking at him closely, (narrowed eyes, tenser than he had been from the time I met him, staring at Ryohei… couldn't recognise his voice even with the scream? Or maybe…)

I handed the whiteboard to Ryohei so he could talk to me.

And he wrote this.

**Going to Sawadas! Because today I can't seem to talk!**

I stared at the board, to Ryohei smiling madly, to the board again, Hibari and then tilted my face to the sun dramatically. A random gust of breeze blew through my hair.

Hibari stood there. Ryohei smiled brightly. I cried fake tears.

Why was I so unlucky?

The disability Ryohei had been heaped with was freaking MUTENESS?

And here I was, thinking another person was here and so therefore Hibari and I could actually _communicate_.

I sighed, before grabbing Hibari's hand (then letting go, because now that someone else was here, Hibari immediately went into attack mode on me when I touched him) I did the weird vibrating thing again with my throat. Simple. Three syllables.

Ryohei.

I think he got it. I hope he did. His eyes were just as slitted, his arms were just as tense, but at least Hibari wasn't going berserk?

It was funny. When I couldn't hear Hibari, he seemed a much more tolerable person. I mean, he was glaring and all, but I couldn't hear the random sniffs, and hms, and secret mutterings of herbivores that made up his personality.

With me deaf, Hibari could even be nice!

I think I nearly went hysterical. Hibari. Nice? Maybe to Hibird.

I smiled at Ryohei (albeit a little twitchily, because really, MUTENESS?) and he smiled back. We headed for Tsuna's house together, which is by rights not that far by then.

Unsurprisingly, Gokudera was already in front of the gate looking a tad bit creepy. He looked at us, widened his eyes at Hibari (for when was he ever with the group? I was surprised he was even following us. Hibari seemed like the type to wander off anyway, to go lie down on the school roof with his eyes closed…) and looked at me who was walking in front of them all.

He said something.

Giving him a defeated dead-pan stare, I held up my whiteboard. I was getting tired of this.

**I am deaf, Hibari is blind, Ryohei is mute. You?**

He scratched his chin. "Ah, that explains a bit," I think he said before giving me a considering look and snatching my whiteboard and scribbling something on it. I read it.

Now it read:

**I am deaf, Hibari is blind, Ryohei is mute. You? **_**Gokudera can't taste**_

I raised my eyebrow, before becoming extra fidgety and glancing over my shoulder. I still felt nervous with all the… soundlessness. Hibari was saying something (oh yeah… with Ryohei mute, I forgot Hibari wasn't mute. He seemed to be explaining something and I was put out – very out of the loop here) to Gokudera, who immediately snarled and took out dynamite. I don't know _how_ Hibari knew there was dynamite, but he did (Hibari powers?) but he launched straight in front… right into my back and well…

Ow. That was all I got to say.

Hibari frowned and said something in (presumed) confusion. Gokudera threw dynamite (why? What the heck was happening?) Ryohei got angry over _something _and tried to yell. Obviously it didn't work, as Gokudera gave him a puzzled look, but Ryohei got in the way and punched the dynamite away while Hibari and me got ourselves sorted out.

…I'm pretty sure Gokudera was swearing right now. Or not? Tsuna just looked out the window anyway.

Actually, everyone in the neighbourhood was, after that explosion. But Tsuna, for some reason, fell over himself. Standing up. Without doing anything.

Maybe his disability was balance or something. No wait, that was just normal Tsuna…

Gokudera and Hibari were talking over my head, Ryohei was trying to join in, and I was just sitting there on the cold, wet(ish) ground feeling very _very_ annoyed. We weren't getting along. At all. I took in a deep breath.

And screamed. Even if I was deaf, doesn't mean that I was _mute_.

They looked at me. Hibari seemed to think there were enemies, which Gokudera corrected with a curt sentence. Hibari scowled. Ryohei looked annoyed. I was _definitely_ annoyed.

They weren't deaf. I wrote a note under the list of disabilities we all had and indicated Gokudera should read it out. He did so, ever so reluctantly. Here was what I wrote.

**We aren't getting through with each other. All we are doing is making ourselves annoyed and dragging civilians into this. **(I was giving a pretty pointed glare at Gokudera) **Let's go into Tsuna's house. I think my Trial has got to do with all this.**

At that, Gokudera exploded and got in my face.

If I read his words and personality right, what was said should be something like

"_You _got to do your trial before _I_ did? It's–"

…then Gokudera turned around. Hibari was scoffing and probably saying something very unenthusiastic and on the lines of 'who will follow you, I'm my own individual, and you all are herbivores and weaklings and I don't want to be associated with you blah di blah'.

So I cut every one of them off, grabbed Hibari and Ryohei (Hibari for his blindness and Ryohei to keep him in line) and marched them into the house.

Before, Nana, bless her soul, had come out, saw us, waved at us and called something that I yet again couldn't hear, and left the door open for us. Gokudera closed it when we were all inside, and right on cue…

Tsuna tumbled down the stairs right in front of us and smiled sheepishly. Or in panic. I didn't really know which, because I was trying to fend off a vengeful embarrassed/annoyed/angry Hibari.

He got off my case when I manoeuvred him to fight Ryohei. And he couldn't say no, of course. He was mute. So, no guilt there.

I showed Tsuna the board, wiped off the last bit and wrote this instead.

**My trial has started. I think all of this is related. **

I gestured towards the growing disabilities list, and looked back when something hit me. Ow, I could have dodged that if I could hear, damn it.

Ryohei and Hibari were having a limited match, thanks to the lack of space while Gokudera was saying his usual hellos (giving me glares when I cut him off). Tsuna was waving his arms around in typical fashion.

It was strange, just watching them without the noise. Tsuna's actions made no sense at all, but what he said obviously calmed Ryohei and Hibari down. Then Hibari made for the door, feeling for the doorknob and I lunged.

No way was he escaping when it took so much effort to get him here. He accidentally pushed me on the stomach (stomach wound here!) when Tsuna's words might have gotten through again, since he seemed to be yelling.

Actually, if I dubbed voices into the scene…

**Tsuna**_: Hiie! No, Alice, why are you doing this!_

**Gokudera**_: She's obviously sacrificing herself. Duh. Who would stand in front of Hibari?_

**Hibari**_: What is this weird thing? [Punches my shoulder] That's it. I'm out of here._

_[Hibari tries to get past the door I am currently blocking]_

**Me**_: … [pushing his hands away yet again. Tsuna looks like he's nearly crying]_

**Tsuna**_: Hiie! Hiie! Hiie! Hiie! Hiie!_

_[I have no other explanation for the faces Tsuna made, otherwise. It seemed like all he did was screaming. And tripping. And yelling something akin to above. Hibari was stopped from starting a fight. That was because of the timely intrusion of…]_

**Nana ****holding I_-_pin**_: Why dears! Come in! I'll just ignore how you demolished the shoe rack, our garden wall and half of the concrete sidewalk outside as well as waking up all the neighbours! Let's eat some cookies shall we?_

Dubbing end. We all went into the kitchen, Hibari a bit slower than usual. He had always seemed to have a tolerance for Nana/women in general/children/animals. Maybe that was why I hadn't been murdered yet. Wait, he had gone and fought Adelheid with the intention to kill. I retract my earlier statement.

But on the other hand…

There were cookies on the table. I laughed. Irony.

Then stopped, because laughing made my throat all vibraty and strange.

Tsuna seemed to grip the chair too hard, but when we were all seated he started talking. Then looked at me, sweating a bit with his ah-there's-a-problem look.

I shrugged, before giving him the whiteboard and indicating the list. He picked up the marker, and with a slightly harder touch than needed wrote something. I nodded a thanks, and looked at it. Now it looked like this:

**I am deaf, Hibari is blind, Ryohei is mute. You? **_**Gokudera can't taste **__I can't feel my hands_

Erasing the 'I' and adding 'Tsuna', it now looked like a whole list of disabilities on the table. Now, a discussion to know why the heck this was all happening. Well, that was what I _wanted_ to do.

Instead, they all seemed to be fighting. Hibari was obviously spamming threats at someone (but staring at the table all the time), Gokudera was fluctuating between enraged and Tsuna hovering, Ryohei was practically making a fit trying to yell something.

Dysfunctional family. I scowled.

And glared at them. No reaction.

What were these eyes for anyway? Intimidating indeed. Hmph.

The usual Vongola chaos muted. What made it so annoying? It was just them yelling without knowing what they were yelling. But I hate not knowing _anything_ so…

Seriously. I wanted to scream again.

The phone rang.

I didn't move, because I knew I wouldn't hear what the other person said anyway, Hibari didn't solely because of his personality, Tsuna looked awkwardly at his hands and his bent chopsticks, but Gokudera leapt up. His face shone, his teeth shone in the artificial light.

He even gave a thumbs up.

Everyone looked disturbed… except for Hibari, who was luckily blind to everything.

"I'll do it, Juudaime!"

I knew because he said it so much. Seriously, it was like his personal mantra. Liken it to Lambo's hourly cries for grape candy, only much worse. I kind of understood why G made his trial the way it was…

Gokudera picked up the phone, scowled immediately and yelled. From his reaction, I just guessed it was Yamamoto. He only yelled like that to Yamamoto.

Then he grumpily grabbed my whiteboard and wrote on it.

**I am deaf, Hibari is blind, Ryohei is mute. You? **_**Gokudera can't taste **_**Tsuna**_ can't feel my hands __**Yamamoto can't feel his legs he needs a pick up**_

Well… that's inconvenient. I nodded at Gokudera, only to get pounced on by a sleepy Lambo. He was mumbling things straight into my face exaggeratedly. A good thing this time, and I was less annoyed since I couldn't exactly hear his whiny voice.

He said this while rolling on the table with his unhygienic body suit.

"Lambo-san can't smell breakfast" – [insert long whiny sound here] – "I want to eat grape candy" – [another long whine]

Then he opened his eyes and saw me frowning at his manners and screamed in fear and saw no retreat.

On my left was Hibari. On my right was a fuming Gokudera. Tsuna had left the table to pick up where Gokudera had left off on the phone.

He sniffed, and scratched his afro to come up with something… pink. I frowned even more and plucked it out of his hands before he had the chance to pull the pin. Then I started my impromptu lecturing session without words.

I pointed at Lambo, the grenade, then to the kitchen where I-pin and Nana were cooking. Then I pointed at the grenade again, and waved my arms for an explosion then to Nana, and did a slicing motion with my hand across my neck.

Lambo looked at all this with watery eyes and he started bawling. I was unsympathetic, but I patted his hair and put the grenade back in.

Tsuna came back. I stopped patting Lambo's hair (Hibari looked highly annoyed – but now that there was an additional kid around, he wasn't that aggressive… I don't think) and scribbled on my whiteboard yet again.

**Call Grey and tell him to pick up Yamamoto and bring him here. And a sorry, because I keep bothering him.**

Tsuna nodded and picked up the phone along with the phone number.

A few minutes later, Tsuna came back. Lambo leapt into his arms blubbering about something I couldn't hear. Tsuna then walked to the kitchen and gave him to Nana, who smiled. Hibari twitched and stood up, and was about to leave again, only to be foiled by the pot-plant which he bumped into. I just pulled him back (which he looked highly irritated at, and refused to sit down, muttering something. Couldn't hear, and therefore wasn't intimidated – Tsuna looked like he wanted to cry though).

Five minutes later, Grey came in with Yamamoto in his arms. Bridal style.

I blinked. Yamamoto sheepishly waved, and said a hello. I showed him the board in response, as Grey settled him comfortably into Hibari's vacated chair. Yamamoto, the only other remotely sane one in the room, thanked Grey, and I grinned at him.

Yamamoto looked at me and said slowly – _bless him _– "I heard this was related to your trial Alice, haha! So what are we doing about it?" Then he looked contemplative. "Actually, what are we supposed to do?" Then he looked at the others, laughed, and asked for the attention.

Yamamoto… is officially a saint.

So when all their attention was still on me, I quickly scribbled what I presumed was Alayne's trial.

Finally!

Gokudera read it out for his beloved Juudaime.

"Alayne's trial is probably trying to catch her. I don't know where she is though," he read slowly. Hibari sniffed then, and muttered something that obviously offended Gokudera yet again, and set Yamamoto laughing.

I couldn't hear. And I nodded to myself – Hibari seemed a much nicer person when deaf.

Yup yup, he did.

* * *

Tsuna smiled. "S-so we're trying to find Alayne, the first Star Guardian of the first family in the whole of Namimori without knowing where she is…" He looked around. "Where's Reborn?"

Ryohei jumped up, and said… nothing. He frowned, and tried to yell again. Fail. So he sighed, before pointing out the window.

"You're saying Reborn-san left through the window? When?" Gokudera scowled.

Yamamoto laughed and said very slowly, "Heee leeeffttt wheenn yoouu weereee aaaall aaarguuiinnggg, haha!"

"Stop that, baseball freak!"

"Buuut Aaliiceee neeeeds toooo uundeerstaand whaat wee aaree saayiinnnggg…"

"Hn," Hibari sniffed from his place next the wall. "I am going to leave now. I don't want to be associated with you idiots," he said, a bit snarkier than usual. But when he turned to leave, Alice yet again caught him by the arm and made him turn back. He frowned down. "The person who keeps grabbing my arm is Sunglasses, yes?"

"Y-yes," Tsuna stuttered out.

"Hmm…" He stood there, before going back to leaning on the wall. "Tell her after this, my debt is repaid."

"I'm sure you can tell her yourself after this," Gokudera just said.

Alice slammed her hand on the table. They all jumped and (secretly) gulped at her glare. After the plates had settled down, she pointed to what she had been writing for the past few minutes. They blinked. Long message.

**First of all, let's at least try and get organised. Alayne is somewhere and I think I have an idea where she is. Finish breakfast. And please DON'T ARGUE. It's annoying. Anyway, I guess we have to bring Lambo as well, which is a pain in the neck, but please DON'T ARGUE when we head out. Someone would need to help Yamamoto though, but DON'T ARGUE because Tsuna is going to help Yamamoto.**

At this, Gokudera burst into flames. "What? Let Juudaime do such menial work as piggybacking Yamamoto?"

"No, Gokudera," Tsuna tried to, yet again, diffuse the situation, "it's fine right?" He looked at Yamamoto, who scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

"Sorry Tsuna, I don't think that's really good. I'm taller than you, after all."

Of course, avoiding the fact that Yamamoto was taller than everybody…

"Let me do it for you, Juudaime! I'll prove to be your right hand man!"

He tried to pick up Yamamoto. And failed.

"You jock!" Gokudera grunted, "how heavy are you?"

"Ah? I haven't weighed myself for ages. Haha!"

Ryohei came back from the toilet and pointed while flapping his mouth uselessly yet again. And practically slung Yamamoto over his shoulder one handedly.

Alice smirked. As expected. Then gestured to her board again impatiently.

**Please get it into your head to NOT ARGUE and communicate. Please someone read this aloud to Hibari as well. Afterwards, we will be heading towards the mountains.**

Yamamoto grinned.

"Hooow doooo yoouuu knooww wheerree shee iiss Alice?"

Alice blinked at him, and scribbled.

**I was thinking productively when you were arguing.**

"Why did she add so many 'don't argues'? Freaky-eyes." Gokudera said, frowning.

"Hey, don't say something like that!" Yamamoto said, forgetting to say things slowly.

"We should all get along together!" Tsuna added brightly.

"Hn. As if I'm going to join in on your chase. I'm only here because of repaying debt to Brighteye Alice."

"Oi, are you insulting Juudaime?"

"Hiie! Please don't throw that dynamite!"

"Haha, calm down Gokudera! He didn't mean it!"

"Don't touch me, Yamamoto Takeshi, or you'll lose your arm." A flash of tonfa.

"Aha, don't be like that!" Yamamoto said, a sharp gleam in his eye.

Practically everyone had their weapons out (Ryohei was yet again shunted into the background with Alice, as he was unable to do his usual shouting to get attention).

"Ara!" Nana walked next to the table, "it seems like you're all getting along together!"

Alice guessed what she was saying. And wondered how she could just blatantly ignore the weapons and explosives floating around,

They all mostly relaxed, some more reluctant than others.

And so they all ate breakfast.

In less than perfect silence, of course.

"Pass the salt, baseball idiot."

"Haha!" Yamamoto passed the salt.

"…" Hibari.

"…" Alice.

"…" Ryohei was violently trying to express something with his eyes.

"…" Lambo shovelled food down his throat in a true food fighter fashion.

Gokudera turned back to Tsuna, who was spilling everywhere because he couldn't really control his hands.

"Let me feed you Juudaime, since you can't feel your hands! Say aaah~"

"It's okay, Gokudera. I can handle it I think…"

"You've already spilt more than three-quarters of your bowl, Juudaime! As your right-hand man, it's my duty to take care of your daily needs!"

Tsuna flushed red, but opened his mouth anyway when Kyoko walked into the room.

"Onii-chan, you forgot your bag again… Tsuna-kun?"

Tsuna froze, while Gokudera happily fed him the spoonful of rice. No, Kyoko-chan! She might misunderstand… Tsuna wanted to cry. Today was not a good day. Where was Reborn?

Actually, thank God Reborn wasn't here, or it would have been much worse…

The window slammed open, and someone kicked him on the forehead.

"Ciaossu. I've come back for breakfast, Mama!"

* * *

_G looked down at the scene underneath them and sighed. "They're so dysfunctional. They're not working as a cohesive unit at all." He frowned. "That storm guardian is getting on my nerves. He isn't helping any."_

"_So cool, G!" Giotto teased with a friendly shoulder bump. "Reminds me of the old days though," he continued, "I mean look! They're practically clones of us! Of course, I was manlier than Tsunayoshi, but that's beside the point."_

"_I think they have a misconception about your personality, Giotto…" Lampo yawned out. "They must think you're all mysterious and cool with that cloak when you're not." He yawned again and looked at the sky. "I just want to go back to sleep… this is such a pain. Why do I have to judge a snotty brat?"_

"_But blocking their senses was a bit mean, Alayne-san!" Asari said, looking at the scene below them in concern. _

_Alayne grinned manically. "I love watching people struggle." She giggled. "I was nice though, I planned to make them all blind, but I was nicer because Alice-chwan gave me those hash brown thingies." She looked up and pondered. "How did she realise that I was going to the mountains anyway?"_

"_It's all in the will of God," Knuckle said calmly__ with a smile__. "If they're meant to pass, they will pass with extremely good results."_

_Alaude sniffed. "The Cloud Guardian is getting too involved."_

"_It is best to interact with others sometimes, Alaude-san!" Asari gently chided. Alaude only opened an eye and closed it again. _

"_Hn."_

"_Giotto, say something!"_

"_Err…" Giotto scratched his head. "They're… nostalgic?"_

_G snorted._

"_You said that already, Giotto dear," Alayne said offhandedly. "Well, would like to hang out more, but it seems like I have to go and prepare _it_." She smiled. "If Alice is anything like Qin, then I think she would never guess I'm not testing her loyalty…" She gave another manic giggle and faded. "I love those trusting types…"_

_Daemon Spade was silent towards the side, apart from the other guardians. His first impression of all of them was… weak._

* * *

Mountains it was.

We trekked towards the forest, in various states of grumpiness. Hibari was grumpiest, with waves of irritation flowing off him. Then Gokudera as usual, then me as I tried to keep up with writing what I wanted to say and failing. Then it was Tsuna, who was stressing out. Lambo was whining again. Reborn was on Yamamoto, who was on Ryohei.

They seemed to be getting along pretty well. Reborn was smirking at least. Yamamoto smiling like usual, and Ryohei seemed to be trying to launch lasers from his eyes from how intensely he was trying to say… something.

I shrugged, continuing to trek down the dirt lane. It was the usual family chaos. Only a heck lot more irritating.

We reached the trees. We reached the bridge. We reached the middle of the bridge.

Then suddenly, all was black.

Blindness as well? No way, right?

Nope, it seemed like I could still see. There was a bright speck somewhere in the horizon. Hibari was unaffected, but everyone was in different states of confusion. But we were still on the bridge. They shouldn't be moving around so much dammit.

Especially if it was a rope bridge. I think someone was about to tip over I heard a giggle.

No, that was wrong. I didn't _hear_ a giggle exactly. It sounded strangely enough, in my head. But everyone else heard too.

"_Well, didn't know how you found me, but hey, it's good enough for me," _Alayne said happily. "_Now you all have to show if you trust Alice-chwan or not. Because right now, I'm only letting her know how to exit this place I just put you in."_

Exit?

…the random bright dot in the darkness?

Walk towards the light!

…

Ironic. Truly ironic.

Surprisingly enough, Tsuna's voice sounded in my brain as well. I think everyone was just as surprised.

"_Are you the first family Star Guardian?" _Tsuna's voice wavered.

"_Duh. You think just anyone can talk in your head, and plant flames in various areas of the body to limit the senses?"_

"_Oh…" _

Gokudera, yet again fired up (much more fired up than usual… I think it was because I got my Trial before his) yelled in my brain. "_Don't say that to Juudaime! He was just clarifying!"_

"_Hn." _I didn't need to even guess who that was… _"I'm out of here once I get my sight back and my debt paid."_

"_Spoken like a Cloud Guardian. I'm sure Alaude would be proud," _Alayne dead-panned. _"Anyway, have fun~ I'll leave you all up to it! Without me here, you can't communicate like this anyway."_

"_Are we still on the bridge?" _Reborn's voice asked.

"_Nice question. No. Bye!"_

…So the white dot in the horizon. Actually, it wasn't a white dot anymore. I could vaguely see a path… and flowers. Actually the whole place was lighting up slowly, creepily. It was all black and white, like a monochrome picture only inside.

Gech. I hated Alayne's trial so far.

"_Sweety, of course you don't mean that." _Alayne said in my brain.

I jumped. "_What the heck?"_

"_Hey, I'm talking to you exclusively right now! You're the only one who can see the path out. Everyone else can only see my little mind world. Isn't it lovely?"_

"_Why is it all black and white?"_

"_Oh, there are colours. I just didn't put you in that part of my brain." _

"_Creepy."_

"_I know." _ She sounded proud.

Hibari blinked. Apparently, he could see again.

Actually, no, since he bumped into something. But thinking about it, it seemed like I could hear limited sounds now. All I could hear was something like a waterfall (a veil of noise that wasn't much good in picking up individual sounds) but it was _sound_ right?

Has it been five hours already?

Grey flames did die at a maximum of five hours after all…

I checked my watch, squinting at the suddenly black and white numbers. It had been four and a half hours…

Grinning, I spun around. And twitched.

How… did they start arguing _again?_

I clapped, before going to Hibari and tugging on his sleeve again. And surprised to feel the hard surface of a tonfa beneath his sleeve. Raising an eyebrow, I shrugged. Then showed them the board, where I had already written something on it.

**I see the way, please trust me to guide you all**

Gokudera looked reluctant. Hibari shook my hand off with something akin to, 'I can hear the footsteps' only a lot less nice, Tsuna smiled at me and Yamamoto grinned. Ryohei grinned too.

Lambo ran away.

Tch.

"COME BACK HERE!" I yelled as loud as I can, four hours of pent-up stress catching up to me. I blinked in surprise.

Oh hey. I could hear myself (if only barely) if I yelled that loud. Lambo froze and looked back at me. I was pretty smug then though, since if I yelled… I could hear myself! Yay!

He froze. He didn't move. I started to frown.

Tsuna went over and picked him up.

"You shouldn't do that, Lambo," he said as usual I presume.

I shrugged and flashed them the board.

**Follow if you want to get out.**

And so I started the long trek home.

* * *

It was kinda weird, seeing everything in black and white. Actually, it would've been weird even if Alayne had given her weird mind world colour. For one thing, the sky was black.

Which was good, since the exit was a white, slowly growing speck on the horizon. But it was weird.

Another thing was, everything that could be covered was covered in these huge flowers that looked like they could swallow Lambo up. Even the trees. Even the clouds.

The only things that weren't flowery were the sky and the grassy path I was following. And these huge butterfly things that looked more like mini-planes than butterflies. Butterflies were supposed to be small and pretty. Not huge and monstrous and staring at everything with their buggy eyes.

Sigh. Trust me to get the weird Guardian with a weird sense of imagination.

Tugging on Hibari's sleeve (he _said_ he could just follow the footsteps, but judging on how he seemed to always nearly trip into a flower… and Heaven forbid anyone seeing him being led around and holding hands with anyone), I looked back occasionally to check on everyone.

Apart from Hibari, everyone seemed reliable. Lambo kept trying to latch onto a butterfly plane for a ride though, and Gokudera seemed to be constantly muttering to himself. Probably about the unfairness of how they had to rely on freaky-eyes or whatever. But when his beloved Juudaime was following me steadily, of _course_ he had to come along.

I chuckled evilly. Now there was something to tease him about later.

And so we slowly made our way to the white not-quite-a-speck-anymore exit.

Was this the test though? I frowned to myself. How was I being tested on our family loyalty?

I mean sure, blocking the senses just told me just _how_ hopeless we were at getting along, but we were still working together, and they still all managed to, you know, survive.

Then what was this test? I scoured my brain to only find… nothing. I was not the most imaginative of people.

I only sighed again, as I tried to discreetly tug Hibari back on the path, Gokudera yelling at Yamamoto, who was still on Ryohei, who was starting to slow down from the weight. Tsuna tried to break it up, while Ryohei did a strange soundless boisterous laugh. Lambo had fallen asleep by now, but Reborn was on Tsuna's head smirking his head off.

At least we were still cooperating. I nodded to myself. If we were still doing that… It was all good.

* * *

We finally emerged from that creepy place with lots of cursing, annoyed shouts, and poised tonfas.

We were… on that bridge again. Only it was near sunset.

"Finally, we made it!" Tsuna cried. I stared at him in surprise.

"Tsuna… I can hear you."

Hibari blinked, and scowled, immediately turning to Gokudera. "Your comments were annoying, _herbivore_." And immediately started attacking. I only stood there in confusion as Ryohei yelled his first words of the day (EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEMMMEEELLY HAPPY TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK AGAIN!)

How did that test determine my loyalty to the family? I didn't abandon any of them, but that was plain comradeship. It was strange…

Reborn hopped onto my head.

"She's here.

And she was, Alayne was floating in mid-air smirking at us all.

"Good job Alice! You passed!"

Huh.

…what?

"The Star Guardian's responsibility isn't loyalty or anything else, is it?" she winked. "It's about how the stars know all and guide the family down the right path. If there was anyone in your family," she nodded behind me, "who didn't trust your instructions or doubted you they would have followed a fake image of you into the depths of my mind and never come back out again."

Frowning in confusion, I tried to sort this out. I hated to repeat myself but… huh?

"You kept them all on the right path. I blocked people's senses because that would just make it all the harder to communicate when such a non-cohesive family is involved." She sighed. "I should know. But anyway," she looked up. "It seems you have done good."

I, on the other hand, was looking at the people behind me with a raised eyebrow. They… had trusted me?

"But anyway, how did you know I was going to be in the mountains?"

I stared at her. "You seem like a person I knew. She liked mountains and high places."

She stared at me.

"Who?"

I grinned.

"Secret."

She shrugged, before pointing a finger at my pocket. Then my box weapon glowed grey as she gave my inheritance thingy, and Tsuna smiled as I took it out. I was the first one done. So next was Asari and… I glanced at Yamamoto, who was testing out his legs again.

"Congratulations, Brighteye! You've passed!" Alayne drew my attention again as she winked at me, and gave me an ethereal hug before fading away.

Well. That was anticlimactic.

"You passed, Alice!" Tsuna said happily, smiling so brightly it hurt to look at.

"Yeah..." I looked at my box, before tucking it into my pocket again and headed back for safer ground that wasn't on a rope bridge.

Hibari walked slowly towards me. "My debt is paid." He stalked past me, to only stumble on a rock. I frowned.

"Or not. Come here." He frowned in my direction (his pride forbid him ever following another person's instruction), and I sighed before walking over to him instead. I leaned closer to his face, and nodded. "You still have some grey flames in your eyes. Alayne!"

Alayne, sure enough, appeared. "Oops, eyes retain the flames. That was why I wanted to make you all blind in the first place." I stared at her in horror. If she had done that, we would never have gotten out of her mind! She chuckled. "I forgot about that. Err… just suck it out, Alice. Just imagine them disappearing. I don't think I have enough energy…" she looked at herself, and I noticed she looked smaller than before.

"Oh, okay."

Working as fast as possible, because Hibari looked like he wanted to positively _murder_ somebody, I ordered it out.

Heh. It's best to have a debt on Hibari, and he knew it. As long as it was there, he couldn't bash me up as much. I think.

I grinned. He glared and whirled on his heel and stalked off down the track, muttering something under his breath. He was walking back to the safe confines of Namimori, where I'm sure I'll feel bad for some thugs because he had a _lot_ of venting to do. I think Hibari would have a grudge on me now, no matter what…

Nodding, I turned back to the family, who were in various states of delight at getting back… whatever they had lost. Hibari definitely seemed nicer when one was deaf. Of course, I should avoid him for a few weeks…

But it wasn't until I was actually in town that I realised how screwed I was.

"Yes!" Some old ladies gossiped as they packed their stores. "That nice prefect from Namimori Middle, you know, the one that keeps the delinquents away from the market place… apparently he was _holding hands_ with a girl this morning!"

"No!"

"Yes! And the girl sounded really nice!"

"That's so sweet. I'm so glad he found himself a girlfriend."

"Me too. A nice boy like that deserves someone special." And then they gave this strange old lady laugh.

…

I was going to be killed.

* * *

**Well, I updated on Monday again! ^^ Sadly enough though, it seems like less people read and review whenever I do that. TT_TT Though I'm glad some people did review, so THANKS TO THEM! I love reading your thoughts, no matter how short.**

**Also, I think I really have to decide on pairings now. I'm kind of leaning towards Hibari right now, so I'm not sure if I should lean back or not. Maybe I should do another poll again. XD Actually, I should. Okay people, the third poll for Hibari vs Tsuna starts… after I get this chapter up! **

**Note: last time Hibari won so if he wins again… yeah.**

**Please review! I love knowing people actually read my story, haha. ^^ 950 REVIEWS! You guys are amazing – without you all I don't think this story would have survived. I'm really really glad you seem to enjoy it, which motivated me to type an extra long chapter today. **

**It didn't have much action, but I still hope you enjoyed it. ^(OO)^**

**SEE YOU ALL… HOPEFULLY NEXT WEEK ON SUNDAY! Or Monday. Depends. XD (people waiting for my other story - would you be glad if I say I've started the newest chapter?)**


	42. Yes, I hate my life

__**Okay - LONG TIME NO SEE! AUTHOR NOTE AT BOTTOM! The only thing I can say is**

**thank you**

* * *

_Tsuna sat in his bedroom, his curtains closed to block out the sunshine, the happiness__,__ outside his grey room. It was afternoon, a fine afternoon where people went out just to feel the breeze, when children ran outside to get their clothes wet. These type of afternoons were supposed to invigorating._

_He was… exhausted._

_Turning over, he buried his face in his pillow, struck by the unfairness of it all. A normal kid would just be stressing about school at seventeen. Studying like crazy to get higher education, slacking off homework and whining about procrastination to friends. Or maybe be nerdy, and have a study group together in the library and get yelled at by the librarian, laughing it off, having fun. Having a hobby._

_Learning how to shoot a gun was not his idea of fun. _

_Having so much responsibility shoved on him a few years ago, being forced to grow up from his happy world of manga and Kyoko. Oh how he sarcastically mocked the other students at school now. They were afraid of growing up. They were afraid of responsibility that came with independence. Happily followed others, followed secure paths all the time griping about how _she_ had the better nail-polish, and why did the internet break down? Tiny little things while he had to claw out his heart every time he sent his friends out to dangerous, bloody missions. Sometimes he realised that he was not as nice as everyone portrayed him. _

_He was not angelic, nor perfect, nor compassionate. He was simply human in a maze of killers. Did that elevate him to the level of saint? Was being human and crying over someone getting hurt an inspirational confidence? People looked up to him, expected him to react like a human every time something happened because they couldn't. They admired him just because he was normal, and he felt sadness._

_Did that mean anything to people? No. Sometimes he felt like he screamed at rock walls. They heard him yes. But they didn't understand him. They were always there, dependable, loyal, strict, admired him even. But they were never _there_._

_The only differences were his Family. His friends that he had built up, fought with, dragged into the underworld with. He was the sky. He surrounded everyone, kept them together but was, in the whole, insubstantial. His friends were the things that defined him._

_The sun to light up the sky, for most people forget the sky is only black without light, that there is nothing there without the sun to show people the world. Then at night, the stars to prick holes in the ceiling of dark, linking their twinkles together to form nets, pictures, painting the sky like a canvas. _

_The clouds float everywhere and anywhere, forming from the basic discipline of the water cycle and covering his face when the sky needed it. The rain when the clouds grew too heavy to hold the weight of life, letting it all down again where it would just rise up and continue on as mist, the only part of the weather that clung to the surface and fooled directly. The beautiful high and low pressure systems that formed storm and lightning, brothers but by no means friends, powerful but rare indeed. _

_They all defined him. They were his support even while he supported all the weights of the family._

_So why did everyone laud him as saint when anything affected his friends? They didn't understand he was far, far away from pure. They didn't understand how important they were to him._

_Without them he was nothing._

* * *

I walked up the staircase, not understanding _why_ I had the sudden urge to climb twenty six? twenty seven? flights of stairs. It was utterly pointless. Stupid even with my stomach wound. Yet here I was, panting after the twenty-fourth floor and climbing out the window to access the emergency staircase to the penthouse floor.

What the heck was I thinking?

After tapping the window (in which Grey whipped into the room with a gun ready in hand – did this happen often or something?) and smiling when Grey smiled back and opened the window I dropped into a puddle of gloop on the floor.

At Grey's questioning eyebrow, I shook my head.

Never again.

Stumbling towards my computer room, I kicked off my shoes and sat on my swivel chair in contentment. A chair! At last! The cold air-conditioning kicked in, and I was freezing within minutes. Now where was my coat in this dark room…

A cough interrupted my search.

I froze and turned around with my chopsticks held out.

"Who's there?"

A leg caught my eye, attached to chains wrapped around a… boy? Who looked vaguely familiar, like a very young version of Jared. Only, you know, much more serious. And midgety.

"Jared? What are you doing here?"

"I came back. I thought you knew."

Uncomfortable silence.

I stared at him before remembering. I came back and asked if Jared was still in the computer room and Grey said _yes._ After I sent him away with plane tickets and everything.

Oh.

"Why did you come back then?" I asked flatly even while rubbing my arms against the cold. He opened his mouth to answer. "No, don't answer yet. I have to get a coat."

And so I hastily exited and rushed back in. He was staring at me strangely.

"So yes?" I asked expectantly as I sat on the chair and gave my professional blank look.

He coughed and cleared his throat. "There was no point in me going back to the Varia," he said gravely. "I failed the battle against you, and therefore my mission for _that person_ has failed and I cannot go back to my home. Although it hurts my honour and pride as a Mafia member to do this, I would rather be considered a prisoner against my will towards a Brighteye to even have a semblance of cooperation with you. Please understand that. Also, the facts that you have presented to me about my brother's death are all valid in their own way. I must apologise for the excess inconvenience… what?"

He fidgeted a little under my stare. His voice was exactly the same, his face… not so much, his eyes were the same and even the _cloak _was the same but why was he talking so formally?

I sighed and massaged my temples.

For some reason I kept remembering the Jared from the future…

"_ALIIIIIICCEE! LOOK OVER HERE!" I looked up just to see Jared dancing horribly with Swan Lake in the background. I hurriedly looked away._

"_Naaw, Alice, you shouldn't be such a poopy-pants!" Jared whined as he smiled brightly. "Training so much is just so boring!" I tried to stab him with a chopstick only for him to dodge it._

"_Ahahaha! Look! I'm so much stronger than you!" He laughed imitating Lambo. I stared at him blankly._

I was staring at him blankly now, wondering how the _heck_ did Varia do a miracle and convert this serious, quiet, overly mature boy into an excessively loud, happy-go-lucky man with a vocabulary of a three year old?

I sighed and waved a hand. "Nothing. Continue?"

He nodded, his eyebrows drawn together. "Of course. May I ask a favour?"

Please believe me when I say I nearly died of heart attack. And I had enough shock for the day, thank you very much. First with my Trial being first (what's the deal? I still had to deal with Alayne) then being deaf, then finding out my trial was actually testing something else and the newly found revelation Hibari was going to kill me… Then Jared _asking for permission?_

I gulped.

"Err, yeah sure. What is it?" Then grimaced at how stiff it came out. Sighing again, I just resigned myself to listen and think. This Jared was not Jared from ten years from the future.

He seemed as stiff as I felt. It must be strange to talk to a not-so-enemy. "Um," he muttered.

"Eh?"

"Erhem."

"Ah."

'Ah' indeed. Eloquence is thy and my enemy, I bitterly thought out. For some reason words just don't come out when they needed to. Really, I think that one day I'm going to have the confession of my life with, I don't know, _someone, _and suddenly all I would be able to say would be

"Ah."

So we fidgeted for awhile before Jared getting the courage to start asking.

"Do you mind if I stayed here for a little longer?"

That was it?

"Of course." I said flatly. "Grey's cooking is the best, you'll be comfortable here." Then I opened the door and called for Grey, which he appeared a minute later drying his hands on his apron.

"Miss?" he enquired.

"Can you put Jared somewhere other than the computer room?"

"Of course." Then he went and picked up the whole chair, Jared chains and all, and carried him out of the room.

"There is a spare bedroom at the end of the corridor, and I would expect you treat yourself as an honoured guest. A television would be provided shortly. I apologise for the small room; the largest bedroom is reserved for the Miss, and the bedroom next to hers is mine." As he deposited a bewildered looking Jared into a brightly coloured room, Grey started unchaining him. "If there is anything you need, just knock. I will be there shortly. Also, please wear this at all times. We cannot trust you yet." He clapped some weird flashy bracelet on his wrist.

As Grey continued blabbering on perfect butler stuff, I slipped into the computer room again.

Time to call Spartan Teacher Anise up.

* * *

"_Seems like he's moving."_

"_Who?"_

"_Brighteye. Number One."_

"_But I heard that spot's never filled."_

"_You're mistaken. He's there. He's always there."_

"_Then why is he moving now?"_

_Green eyes flashed as fingers paused over the keyboard for half a second before resuming. Was that worry she was observing? But she was never worried. If she was…_

"_I have a hunch that I want to prove wrong right now."_

"_But your hunches are always right."_

_Only the uneven tapping of the keyboard answered her sentence. Then as she opened the door to leave the dark room, the hunched figure in front of the computer spoke._

"_He's interested in someone. I know that at least. I just want to make sure that it's not him he's targeting. If he is, one of our own is in trouble."_

_Her eyes darkened. They all knew the consequences when one trial contradicted another._

* * *

And there she was, for some reason hiding in Tsuna's room. No, she was not a pervert, or a stalker, and it must have been obvious at this point that she wasn't an assassin. Alice was being normal. Kind of. Really, she didn't do something as creepy as this on a normal basis but if what Anise said was true…

It seemed like she had to bury her newfound feelings of comradeship again. She wouldn't, she _refused_ to drag Tsuna into this type of Brighteye mess. And what an extravagant mess it was.

Well… she couldn't really hide anywhere outside right now because really, Hibari was on a very angry prowl. She saw it. On the satellite, and oh was it freaking scary.

The door creaked open, and instead of Tsuna, a black fedora with an orange ribbon bounced into the room. Oh great.

"Ciaossu."

"Hello, Reborn."

"Tell me you aren't going to do what I think you're going to do."

Alice's face blanked over in a '_Who? Me? Never!_' expression. "I frankly don't know what you're talking about."

However, Reborn knew better than that. He was chosen to be an Arcobaleno for a reason, a trusted advisor of the Vongola Ninth, and better yet, the best Hitman in the world. Although he knew all Brighteyes had a stalking tendency (how _else_ would they get so much information?) Alice would need a better explanation to haunt Tsuna's bedroom. It was a good thing he made Dame-Tsuna go to school today.

This had to be handled with a care that Tsuna did not have.

"You are part of the Vongola. All problems are our problems once you're in the family."

Alice scowled and pulled out a packet of potato chips from her pocket. "You know Mafia law. I am not officially part of your family since I come from another family. Lambo's the same. You know that."

But Reborn could feel the resolution fading. That was good. Alice was a wildcard already – no one could predict what she would do, what she would help with. Sometimes, thinking that his dear friend, Ninth, could have avoided the torture Xanxus put him through with a simple question made him mad still. Angry. Family loyalty was absolute.

Which was also why he understood why she had done so. Brighteyes came first before everything else. He knew. The others didn't.

For we, Reborn thought with a smirk at the grey-haired teen, live in a different reality.

Alice eyed the smirk with apprehension. Reborn always had explosives _everywhere._

"I sensed a positive change towards the Vongola before."

Alice started at that, before making a face. "Tch. You read minds."

"Correct," Reborn said with a smirk, ready to do anything for his student. A Hitman could only dedicate himself wholly to the job after all.

It was that or die.

"Then tell Tsuna," Alice said with that blank face of hers (she should seriously try a hand a poker, Reborn mused), "I'll go to Italy for a bit."

"For what?" Reborn said, actually curious.

A shark smile response as Alice walked past him towards the door. Secretly glad Alice didn't wear skirts, he looked at her. "Varia. What else?"

"And?"

"You know the Mafia motto. It's do or die. I can't tell you everything. Figure it out yourself."

What?

Challenge accepted. He smirked, before hopping towards the corridor and telling Leon to turn into a ladder for him to climb into the attic. It was time for some much needed research into the Brighteyes.

Now who should he threaten to kill?

No. Cough. Let him rephrase that.

"What favour should I call on now?" he smirked to himself. Leon twitched his tail, preparing to make some bullets. It had been awhile since they had moved.

* * *

I calculated the days. Yamamoto's trial was today and tomorrow, and I would probably come halfway through Lambo's. Sighing a bit, I regretted not meeting Asari. After all, he seemed the most sane out of all them, apart from G. Although I felt bad for not supporting Yamamoto through his trial, I knew he would make it. Varia (and Jared) was more important right now.

Looking out the window at the trees flashing by, my eyes drooped from boredom. The others were all at school, and that could be skipped because there was no tests, I didn't want to see fanboys and one word -

_Hibari._

I was not suicidal, contrary to popular belief. Pulling up next to the airport midafternoon, I stepped out, putting on my sunglasses. I didn't really need to be remembered here. Private jet and all. This airport was for exclusives, the rich (which meant certain underground syndicates as well of course. Like Vongola and Cavallone).

Moving slowly with my Grey-packed bento (Miss! I made your favourite lunch today! And hearing that, how could I resist?) I yawned through my shuffling towards the airport.

Nothing special, it was starting to get cloudy, and a wind was starting to pick up. The airport was fifteen metres away.

I wanted my afternoon nap.

Checking my Ring was still on the chain around my neck, Hawk and Falcon in my pocket, chopsticks secure in my hair, bento nice and safe, I was about to step into the airport when a really loud shriek of ALICE stopped me.

Who the _heck?_

When I turned… I saw Tsuna. Of all people, chasing me down the concrete like his life depended on it was the Vongola Decimo who was supposed to be at school. My eyebrow quirked up. Was this like a shoujo manga or what? I was coming back in two days, so what's the rush?

"Yo, Tsuna," I said blankly at him while trying to figure out why he was running at me in the first place.

"Is… Is it true that you're leaving, Alice?" He panted out, hands on his knees from sprinting so hard. I raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"Yeah. So?"

Tsuna looked at me with desperate eyes. "You can't leave, Alice! We need you! We all need you!"

I blinked.

Pause

Rewind

Play

… I stared at Tsuna. "Did Reborn say something about leaving permanently or something? If that's so," I said to Tsuna's teary face and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief Grey packed for me to wipe my mouth, "it's not true. I'm just popping to my family for a visit. I'll come back in a few days. I miss my… sister too, you know?"

The word sister twisted out of my mouth strangely. Liza was not my sister, but this was a necessary white lie after all.

Tsuna's eyes widened at the information, before he started blushing slowly from his neck up to his ears. "Th-that Reborn!" He yelled into his hands as he covered his face, "he tricked me!"

I couldn't help but chuckle and ruffle his hair.

"I won't leave you, Tsuna. I won't leave you all for a good reason. What made you think that?"

Tsuna groaned into his hands. "He said something about…" he faltered before shaking himself up and taking his hands off his face in an attempt to slow the blush. "Nothing really. N-now that I think about it, it's pretty stupid, haha…" he laughed sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.

Shrugging, I took his elbow and led him inside before being surprised by his height all over again. I had always been taller than Tsuna, but now I was only taller than him by a few centimetres. My eyes softened.

He was growing up.

After helping him from tripping over his feet once, dragging him from a dangerous whirlpool of rich people and finally finding a quiet corner with only busy business men, I plopped him on the chair.

"Now that you realise I'm not leaving you all forever, anything else you want to say?" I said as lightly as I could but somehow it still came out awkward. I winced.

There was a reason why I did not do small talk or negotiations.

"Not much." Tsuna shrugged just as awkwardly. "I'm a little worried for Yamamoto… but I know he'll pass." He smiled brightly at me. I gave a half smile back.

"Of course he'll pass. He's Yamamoto."

Tsuna smiled and laughed. "Yes!"

He laughed, while I smiled. It was comfortable for a second before Tsuna sobered up a little.

"Well, the only other thing is just how I'm a bit confused on what we're supposed to do now but…"

Now that wouldn't do. I bumped my elbow against his stomach, and he gave an oof. "What's there to be confused about?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Just look at it like your video games. Byakuran is bad, we're good, and we're going to defeat him in the end after we get a power up."

_Just look at the black and white_

Tsuna smiled. "When you say it that way, it seems so simple," he admitted.

_Let me see all the greys for you_

"It's that simple," I nodded. "My plane's here. See you in two days."

"I'll tell the others," Tsuna waved. I did the same, and cradled my bento in my arms. Was it lunchtime yet? Stepping on the plane, I greeted a very confused Jared.

"Are you forcing me to go back to Italy even after the explanation?" He asked ever-so-seriously.

"Yes. And I'm going with you."

At his raised eyebrow, I only popped open my bento, flopped onto a chair and ate a piece of chicken.

I wasn't really that looking forward to meeting Xanxus again though. I sighed.

Life (or death) was so unfair.

* * *

_**A Grey Special – 2**_

"_Well, hurry up!"_

_Grey 'hurry __upp-ed'__, trying not to spill Turchino's coffee, French toast, honey, and the little bowl of cream while running. It didn't really work._

"_Sorry," he said meekly at the girl. She huffed, inadvertently blowing a puff of smoke his way. He had learnt the hard way that cigars weren't the same as cigarettes. Turchino was very proud that she smoked cigars and not cigarettes. Apparently, with cigars you didn't breathe the smoke in – it was more of an enjoyment of having smoke smells near your face. He didn't really understand the attraction, but that was Turchino. Somehow, to him, she made even smoke pretty._

_It matched her eyes._

"_What?" she griped, "that's the fourth time this week you've spilled the cream!"_

"_Sorry," he said again. _

"_I swear, I don't know why I keep you here," she said while leaning over the map of France that he had shown him the first time he was here – six months ago. "First you got scammed to buy the wrong herbs and making half the crew have a stomach ache," Grey cringed at that, "and now as my new bus boy you can't even get my breakfast on time!"_

"_Sorry…"_

"_And stop saying sorry, goddamnit! How's your shooting practice going?"_

_Grey shook his head miserably. "It's going fine I guess… I'm still a bit behind the others though. I'm not even as good as you…"_

"_That's good," she puffed as she set her cigar down. "If you caught up to me so fast you'll have to be a prodigy. Or I'm just worse than I thought which, of course, isn't possible." Pouring nearly half the little pot of honey onto her toast (how could she eat things so sweet he would never know) she continued. "Well, if you did catch up to me, even I would have to acknowledge that you're a good addition, haha!" __s__he laughed, and he smiled._

_There wasn't anything else to do. All the people were friendly though (even though a bit scary – all of them seemed so _macho_ compared to him. He was a weedy kid who loved operas and dramatics. They were bar brawlers who liked the occasional sailor's baudy song. But somehow, they all loved him, he really liked them, and everyone was happy) so even though he still got occasional bouts of grief they led him through it. They trained him too. School wasn't an option for him anymore, since he knew the underground police's secret base. But it was surprising to know just how much they knew calculus. _

_Of course, they fought much better than their math._

_Martial arts from the east didn't take to him. He wasn't strong enough to handle a heavy weapon constantly, and the only thing that seemed even marginally competent was aim._

_His next aim was to shoot well._

_He smiled and headed for the training areas where he was allowed to shoot anything other than bullets, as they had 'none for you to waste'__,__ as Turchino kindly put it. A slingshot worked fine for him for now. Calculating trajectories and stuff had to become natural, he reminded himself. _

_He stayed there the entire day._

* * *

_He was getting into the gist of it. There were about twenty people, twenty-two if you counted Turchino and him. They were all nearly big softies anyway._

_Marie was a guy who was apparently mistaken as a girl as birth. Certainly wouldn't now. He cleared two metres easily, ate four plates of food for breakfast, was basically a huge wall of muscle, had wicked aim with an axe. Problem was, he liked crocheting. He told this only to Grey (for whatever reason) and taught him his personal tricks to crotchet the most beautiful patterns into a jumper even while singing a baudy song that made his ears want to fall off._

_He liked Marie._

_Next was Pierre. He was an awesome guy, a great cook really. He could really throw those kitchen knives well (but he preferred not to throw his __bébés thank you very much). He was actually officially a sharpshooter but _somehow_ he got his scary reputation from throwing his beloved knives at people stealing food. For some reason he liked Grey stealing his food though (muttered something about being scrawny) and one day told him he actually liked sculpting. He watched him one day, invited into his room and watched him make a pot while singing a baudy song that made his ears want to fall off._

_He liked Pierre._

_Well, there was also the gardener who took care of the dirty stuff. He never really caught his name, but called him __monsieur__boucles because of his huge curly moustache. He was nice too, and one day he caught him cutting off some roses to give to Anne-Marie (usually just called Anne because there was already a Marie around)__,__ the nurse who got sick because of him getting the wrong herbs. There, he sang the only song he knew for the girl – that baudy song that made his ears want to fall off._

_He liked monsieur__boucles too._

_Actually, he liked everyone, he reflected as he shot yet another rotten egg into the bullseye of the target. It was getting smelly out here in the garden. It was peaceful._

_But all who lived in Italy knew that peaceful wouldn't last._

_Turchino called a meeting the next day._

"_Marie, Pierre, Galopin, Gris, you four are going with me into an infiltration mission into Paris. We need some info, and a person has it there. And meanwhile, we can gather more information."_

_The whole room protested._

"_Gris is still a __jeune garçon, Turchino!" __t__hey protested. Turchino just raised an eyebrow at them_

"_Ho, it seems like you've grown popular, little Gris." She murmured into his ear before looking straight at them. "You all haven't seen just how good this jeune garcon has gotten with his aim, have you? He's a good asset now. And you know what assets do." Her eyes seemed a little sad as she said so._

"_They go out on missions."_

_She straightened out right afterwards. "Marie! Galopin! Gris! Pierre!" They all saluted her in turn. Oh, Grey thought a little distantly, so Galopin was __monsieur__boucles. That's kind of funny, since galopin meant monkey… "You are all to meet me at four in the morning tomorrow!"_

"_Yes!"_

_As Gris stood tall for Turchino to pass, he retracted an earlier statement._

_He liked everybody here, but for some reason… he still liked Turchino more than the others. He shook his head at himself even as all the others patted his back muttering about how unfair it was. He knew it. Love was so weird. Even though he was young, he thinks (well, maybe) what love was._

_Mhmm._

_As they burst into the baudy song that didn't really affect him anymore, he left the room to pack. _

_Maybe he should bring extra towels. They said it was going to rain, and it was never bad to go extra prepared…_

* * *

**And that's how Grey's mothering instincts started. ^^'**

**Well, I know that first part was random. Really random. I just kind of put it in because this chapter needed to be LONGER! That was my response to reading so many 'Tsuna is a cute, innocent, pure, saint even if he kills' because I know many people like reading it (I do too, sometimes) but I agree with myself with I say Tsuna is sarcastic. He is a bit manly as well. He's firmly grounded into reality and trusts his friends a little too much. So after reading the twentieth fic in succession that had Tsuna so… ARGH I had to write something dammit! **Colbub's sister here. Nice to meet you finally! And I totally agree with Tsuna being sarcastic. ^^ That's all. Byebyes

**Well anyway… *cough***

**I wrote this in a day after two assignments (which I also did in a day) because of how AWESOME you all are! I mean, 998 reviews. I want to cry. Actually, I do. In a happy way.**

**Oh my gosh.**

**Yes, I am totally crying. It's been my dream for ages, to get a fic UP THERE in the realms of 1000 and getting people to read my story, appreciate it, tell me what's wrong, and well, writing. And it's an OC fic as well. We all know how OC fics sometimes get less readers… *tries to find a tissue to blow nose***

**Yes, I love you all. Yes, I WILL list you all next chapter for all you've done for me. You've read my story up to here! What else can an author want?**

**TT_TT**

**With love,**

**colbub**


	43. EXTRAS FOR COMMEMORATING 1000 REVIEWS!

_**COMMEMORATING THE EVENT OF BREAKING THE REVIEW COUNT OF 1000 - EXTRAS!**_

* * *

**Extra: The day Fuuta lost his scarf (well, kind of)**

Tsuna looked in horror at a chocolate-milked scarf. He had just put his mug there, innocently, and then his elbow just had to _brush_ it.

There was a rumour that Fuuta was an AB blood type.

He shuddered. You never saw Fuuta _without_ his scarf. The only time he took it off was in the shower, or when he was sleeping. Even in summer, he wore his scarf. In the pool he wore his scarf… (well, once) and well, everywhere he wore his scarf.

And he had just spilled chocolate milk on it.

THERE WAS A RUMOUR THAT FUUTA WAS AN AB BLOOD TYPE.

Tsuna moaned. What was he going to do? Fuuta's happy voice had just come of the bathroom and he was coming down the stairs. He tried to calm himself down. A person's personality isn't defined by their blood type, it was just a Japanese myth thingy.

Yeah…

Fuuta came down the stairs to see Tsuna wiping up chocolate milk and _no scarf._

"Tsuna-nii…" Fuuta asked with his eyes full of the youth of spring, the childhood innocence, the puppy-dog eyes of a kicked, loyal puppy, full of trust and hope and all sorts of positive things like sunshine and rainbows and unicorns.

"Why is my scarf under the sink?"

* * *

**Extra: The Gender-Switching bullet**

It all started with Reborn really. One day, toting his daily shot of espresso, his perma-smirk, Leon, fedora-with-orange-ribbon, suitcase and all things Reborn, he came down to the kitchen where Tsuna was hurriedly snorting his breakfast up his nose. No, literally.

Reborn delicately (and elegantly, he must add) sipped his coffee through his _mouth_, hoping that his student would get the hint to do so as well.

_Really_, he sighed in his brain at the scene of breakfast chaos of Tsuna choking up his breakfast, Lambo whining for seconds even for breakfast (stupid cow), Bianchi seeing him and coming to pick him up and Fuuta trying to save his breakfast from the cow's evil clutches.

Sometimes he wondered for the future of the Vongola…

"Reborn!" his student exclaimed after Bianchi had settled him on his lap.

"Ciaossu," he said even as he reached for his suitcase, intending to show what was inside to him as he wanted to see Tsuna's reaction (they were ever so amusing).

"Sorry, Reborn!" His student said as he rushed out of the room, "I'm going to be late!"

Reborn paused. Ignore him, hm?

Oh was he going to regret that. Reborn smirked in amusement as he pulled out a pinkish blue bullet out of his suitcase.

"What is that, Reborn-san?" Fuuta asked politely.

"A new type of bullet. I wanted to see what happened, but then Dame-Tsuna ran away…"

Fuuta pitied poor Tsuna-nii as Reborn hopped lightly out of Bianchi's arms and out the window, his face nearly beaming happiness. And everyone knew Reborn being happy meant someone else's suffering. As Alice-nee would say, 'sadistic Hitman babies…'

* * *

It was maths. Tsuna sighed, even as Alice was called on yet again to answer the question on the board because she was 'glaring'… for the fifth time that day. Her fan-boys were fluctuating between seething (_HOW DARE HE PICK ON ALICE-SAMA?_) and adoring (_Alice-san's so smart!_).

Trust me, he knew. He sat between two.

At one corner, a girl shot glances at a sleeping Yamamoto, making coo coo faces at his '_adorable sleeping face!' _and another was sneaking secret snapshots of Gokudera lounging in his chair.

It would probably go into the school's secret black market trade of 'The Newest Gokudera Looking Cool Picture.'

Sometimes he wished his ears didn't work quite so well. He meant, his Hyper Intuition was good and all, but sometimes it picked up on too much school gossip. It didn't have to make him notice how the 'hottest' nail polish colour was pink instead of blue. He was a good to honest, very manly guy!

"Sawada, answer question twenty-one!" The teacher shouted, annoyed at the perfect lines of correct equation in front of him.

"H-hai!" Tsuna's voice climbed a few octaves.

Reborn looked on outside in the tree, in his revolver holding four bullets.

"A mafia boss must be prepared for anything, Tsuna!"

The class looked on curiously when Tsuna was engulfed in pink smoke, followed by Yamamoto, Gokudera, and strangely enough Alice with… blue smoke?

Then they blinked.

Who was that?

A head of long, shiny, brown hair emerged into view, with a delicate girly voice saying, 'what? What's happening?" Wide brown doe eyes, slender legs (although a bit on the short side) and a _summer uniform_ in autumn. Such a refreshing innocent face!

The class blinked again.

…what?

Gokudera then stood up from the smoke. "Who woke me up from my sleep?" growled the usual husky voice (as the girls in the class imagined). But something was strange! It wasn't usually so girly sounding. In fact…

Gokudera stood up completely. Or who the class had previously thought was Gokudera. Because Gokudera was not a gorgeous, teen Italian. Well, yes, he was, but not a gorgeous teen Italian FEMALE. The guys in the class's hearts stopped beating. Even the octopus hairdo looked beautiful in the sparkling morning sunlight. But where was Gokudera? Because he certainly didn't have… _assets_ like those. Some of the more innocent guys in the class covered their eyes.

She… she had her first few buttons UNBUTTONED!

"Juudaime!" she exclaimed, strangely reminiscent of Gokudera and his strange nickname for Dame-Tsuna. "You look so beautiful! Are you cross-dressing for an event or something?"

"Hiie!" said the innocent brown teen, stumbling backwards.

Tsuna's mind was scrambling. Why did he suddenly have long hair? Why was he in a, in a, in a… skirt? Why was everyone staring at him? What were those weird things on his chest? Could his Hyper Intuition help him? He tried to calm down and focused.

His Hyper Intuition told him the hottest hair-dye was currently blonde.

"Goku…Gokudera?" Tsuna squeaked in a higher voice than he had ever produced when he saw Gokudera. In fact, it sounded girly. Right, he sometimes sounded girly. Don't panic. Breathe.

Tsuna was not the most coordinated person. He (she) was clumsy. He (she) was a bit academically challenged. In his shock, Tsuna stumbled.

A scrape of the chair, and a deep, manly, gentle voice. With a familiar, slow accent.

…

It couldn't be.

"Are you alright?"

Tsuna opened his eyes slowly and blushed madly. A strong arm was curled around his shoulders, holding him up, the morning sunlight was silhouetting his face but he could see the eyes. Oh my god, he screamed in his brain, this couldn't be _Alice_. She wasn't that tall.

Now, this was what the class saw.

First, there were plumes of smoke. Then, where Tsuna was standing there was an innocent-looking girl that looked like she came straight from a 'So Cute' magazine. Then came this silver haired beauty that rose from Gokudera's seat that coincidentally looked Italian.

Then the 'So Cute' magazine girl, in true shoujo fashion, stumbled backwards and tripped and then Alice, just like usual, stood up to save her (Alice was nice that way). Only the person that stood up wasn't Alice.

Tall, muscled, slitted bright piercing eyes, hair pulled back into a short high ponytail. He had the 'aloof' feeling, and the girls in the class gaped in disbelief. There was a person like _that_ in their school? He looked like, an anime otaku in the class sighed, as if he fell straight from a shoujo manga. He was a totally hot _bishie_. There was nothing else to say for it.

And the girl had landed in his arms with a soft 'ah!' and the guy saved her with only one arm looked down at her tenderly. The sunlight was streaming artistically through the window, and a random breeze whipped through the classroom briefly to stir the girl's hair.

For some reason, the class couldn't move.

Were they looking at a Korean drama scene or something? Definitely a shoujo manga scenario, but…

"I-I'm fine!" the girl blushed cutely as she leapt out of the cool guy's arms. Then she patted her hands on her skirt in embarrassment.

"Really?" the hot foreign guy said with a slight frown that reminded the class of Alice's glare. "You should be more careful."

Ah, the girls in the class sighed in unison, what a lovely manly voice.

"How dare you touch Juudaime!"

The previously forgotten (not really so forgotten for the innocent boys who had hid their eyes) marched up to the guy and looked up at him, standing so close that their chests were touching. Ohoho, the boys snickered this time. Fanservice! Or envy, in some cases, at the foreign man who was talking to the Italian woman.

"Juudaime is _mine!"_

The whole class gasped at this, even the teacher (who had degenerated to the point where he was thinking that this was really all a dream, so what was the point in teaching?)

A love triangle?

"Uum, Goku…" the innocent 'So Cute" magazine girl talked to the hot one before trailing off, unsure as to what to do.

At all this, Reborn was watching with avid interest.

He had always secretly known that Tsuna would have worked as a girl as much as a boy. But to think Alice and Gokudera as well…

Hehe… he snapped some shots for future blackmail.

Meanwhile…

A muted gunshot from the rooftop sounded, and a few minutes had passed before the classroom door opened to let in a beautiful black-haired, pigtailed girl into the room. The guys wondered if this was a dream from girl-deprivation. Their minds couldn't be this sick, could they? The new girl was beautiful, no doubt. Her hair shone, her eyes glinted, her mouth was set in a firm line, and she was holding… _tonfas?_

"Where's the baby?" she hissed, as she brandished them.

"Hi-Hibari?" The innocent, brown-haired beauty squeaked.

The class froze.

HIBARI?

That was it. Officially. The teacher found himself pinching himself repeatedly to get out of this previously interesting nightmare. Because in no way could a person walk out of the door if they knew…

Wait, Hibari had cross-dressing as a hobby?

"Hibari," the hot-guy-that-had-Alice's-eyes stepped in front of him. Her. Him, because it was Hibari. No, it was a her because who had such believable… err, chest things?

"Don't stop me, Bright."

He sighed, that hot-guy-that-had-Alice's-eyes.

"I guess it's true, I don't know why I'm standing in front of you. I'm probably suicidal. I think it's because I'm a guy now." He flexed his hand experimentally. "For some reason, I can't think as well as well as I normally do. No wonder you all have one track minds… I feel kind of stupid, really. I suddenly want to punch things more."

The girl that was apparently Hibari narrowed her _sparkling grey _eyes_. _

"Were you calling me stupid?"

"Probably," the guy agreed.

"Hibari!" The innocent girl brown-haired girl 'hiie'ed. Kind of. "Don't destroy the classroom!"

"Hn," girl-Hibari sniffed even as she turned on her heel. Was that… under her jacket... Yes it was…

And the guys all had to bash their heads on the table to get rid of the image of that _skirt_…

As the hot-guy-with-Alice's-eyes and… female Hibari left the room to apparently fight, with the long-haired girl and the Italian beauty following them, Yamamoto yawned.

What were those irritating things on his chest?

He frowned sleepily, before shrugging and falling asleep again.

* * *

**Extra – the time when Lambo got sent to his first solo mission**

Lambo rocked back and forth on his heels excitedly in Tsuna's mission room. He was finally here! He knew Tsuna still thought he was still too young, but hey, nearly-twelve was pretty old for some mafia, as they sent even five-year olds to missions (as proven by I-pin, who was happily serving ramen now. He'd have to tell her this exciting news after he comes back!)

Ah, even the sunlight seemed brighter today!

Alice and Gokudera were in the next room, each moaning to the other about the _paperwork_ and how it never ended and why couldn't (this was from Alice only) Tsuna do more of his own paperwork dammit, and why (this was from Gokudera only) did these people keep sending him fan letters when he had more work to do?

As one, they sighed, as they had only really bonded over paperwork really. No one in the family could even guess that these two hardworking people plotted pranks in boredom, mostly taking into account Alice's invisibility and Gokudera's storm destruction flames.

Alice smirked at a particular memory of that arrogant mafia don's pants falling down. A dab of storm flame, lightly, on the buckle as she slipped by the guards…

"Isn't that the idiot cow?" Gokudera muttered, pushing down his glasses to get a better look. He only needed glasses for reading anyway. His long-sight was as good as ever.

"It is," Alice agreed. "What is he doing here?"

"Wait, Juudaime said something about a solo mission and there was no-one to do it…"

A flat look. "We're here, wasting away over paperwork and he says there's no one to do it?" An indignant huff. "I'm getting out of shape! Yamamoto gets sent on missions all the time!"

"Well, you know after _that," _Gokudera stared at Alice, "car accident he's been really careful for you."

"Whatever," Alice dismissed. "I just want to go out already. Meeting up with Byakuran to eat marshmallows wasn't _it_. I know it was an important diplomatic mission and all but still… Lambo's eleven and we're experienced fighters and he's sending him?"

"Well, idiot cow has improved. After your countless scolding sessions," Gokudera leaned back. "What I don't get is why he won't send me."

Alice grinned wryly. "You're his right-hand man. What right-hand doesn't stick close to the body?"

Gokudera scowled.

But no matter what, Lambo was still part of the family. Annoying, but he was getting better.

Meanwhile, Lambo kept glancing around. Although he craved some ice-cream right now (he cringed at a memory of Alice-nee telling him in that guilt-tripping voice – she never actually _yelled_ – that people had to control themselves sometimes) he wanted the mission more.

Where was Tsuna anyway?

"Haha, sorry Lambo," came the _voice_ and Lambo turned to see a sheepish, black-suited Tsuna rushing and tripping over the new carpet/rug/thing. He grinned. That was Tsuna. Looking all cool, and then tripping over something. "You ready for your mission?"

"Yes!"

Then the Tsuna-frown came along. "I'm not so sure, you're still so young… Maybe I should give you something less dangerous instead…"

Lambo resisted the urge to pout. He had said that for the _last four missions_.

"Tsuna-nii, I mean, boss, if you won't let me prove myself then how am I ever going to show that I'm strong enough?" He said reasonably (and ripped straight off one of Alice-nee's lectures).

Tsuna raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Well, that was mature. This is just a recon mission, it isn't that hard." He got up and walked to his desk, and dived into the paper in his desk. "Let's see," he heard mumbling, "where was it?"

Then he came out with letters in his ridiculously gravity-defying hair. "Found it! It's just recon on some empty warehouses; just in case that the rumour that there are enemies on Vongola territory was true. On the slightest hint of an attack you come straight back, you hear?"

"Yes, Tsuna-nii! I mean, Boss!"

Tsuna chuckled.

"Just call me Tsuna-nii. I don't mind."

Lambo shot a grin.

On the other hand…

Alice was frowning. "He ripped off my lines. I said that to him last week about letting that poor cat have a chance and prove it wasn't a total nuisance. I can't believe that boy…"

Gokudera frowned. "He was the one that kept annoying my cat?"

"Yeah."

As they both got steadily annoyed, they went back to paperwork and it was Gokudera who held out an intercepted letter in surprise. "Hey, the address is those warehouses that Lambo was just sent to…"

Alice frowned. "Probably the rumour was true then."

"Hey, you're Brighteye. You should have known."

Alice shrugged. "So?"

Gokudera could only sigh, before smirking at the piles of work. "Maybe…" Alice caught on.

"Oh yes. We can't be mean seniors when one of our cute Guardians might be in danger."

"Of course, we're just checking on him. Nothing about eradicating forces."

"Nor getting some air and action. I've seriously wanted to burn these piles of paper." Alice put her infamous glare to use of the stacks and stacks of paper around the room. Sadly, pieces of paper were inanimate.

"Yes, let's. Juudaime wouldn't mind."

Alice raised an eyebrow at that, before conceding that Gokudera was more desperate to escape the paper than he looked.

"Let's go." She pulled some shimmering grey flame over them and disappeared after the dot that was Lambo, who was flying off into the sunrise.

* * *

_Oh shit._

Lambo ran curse words in his mind even as he froze. He just ran over at least ten trip wires. Not good.

"What do we have here?" A voice sneered on top of him. The warehouse wasn't large, he was in a narrow corridor where he _couldn't_ use his oversized horns. Okay. Electric attacks then.

"Gragh!" He grunted as he gave a huge explosion of green flames, only to see in shock that the electricity running down the metal walls weren't hurting the man.

"I'm a Thunder Flame user too, kid."

Just as he was going to put up a shield around himself for an impending attack, two voices came up. _Familiar_ voices.

"I knew I was a talented stalker," came a dry voice sarcastically stating, to whom, he didn't really know. "Not only did our target not notice us, all the people that stalked our target didn't notice us." The voice was coming from the room behind him…

"Well, you have an advantage," said another one, a man voice this time.

"True. At least I know we made the right choice in following Lambo now."

The Flames slid away, and the grey flames hovered in a glowing ball on top of Alice-nee's head, lighting up the room in a monochromatic way, making her eyes seem even _creepier_. It was these times that he was so _so so so so so so _glad he wasn't on Alice-nee's hit list. No matter how much she sat around nibbling on hash browns, she was a talented fighter. It was kind of easy to forget sometimes…

Gokudera's green eyes were glowing with circles, which meant his contacts were on. "Bastards, who are you to invade Juudaime's territory?" he snarled.

The men (there were about fifty of them, and it was becoming more and more by the second) took a second to consider who they were.

Yellow eyes. Grey Flames. Both grey headed, big ass box weapon which Gokudera hopped on while loading dynamite into the skull on his arm. It was the dynamite that woke them up.

"Shit! It's the Storm and Star Guardian!"

The subsequent decimation (his confidence came back after seeing them two – though he only took out ten or so) was truly horrific. The two were _demons._

Lambo's jaw dropped.

Why were they sent to do _paperwork _of all things?

Alice smirked, wiping her forehead. "That was good stress relief."

"Yes, it was," Gokudera said while pulling out a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it. The line of silver smoke trailed slowly into the air, even lazily, compared to the fight.

"I just imagined them as stacks of paperwork and the rest just did itself."

"Mm."

Lambo coughed. "Wasn't this supposed to be a solo mission?"

Gokudera shrugged even as Alice hauled one of the weakest looking ones for interrogation onto her back, stumbling a little from the weight. "It was supposed to be recon, but right after you left we found a letter that proved there were enemies and we just followed you."

But yet, the inner procrastinator in Lambo said something else. He was the _master _of procrastination in the Vongola house. His eyes narrowed.

"You two were just trying to avoid your paperwork, weren't you?"

To their credit, they just turned to each other and ignored his statement. Then they disappeared, waving and saying that they would give all the credit of decimating them to him. When he got back, he got a sound lecture from Tsuna-nii (_didn't I tell you to come back at the slightest sign of danger?)_ and Alice and Gokudera were innocently cursing over paperwork again.

And no, their laughter was not nervous and high-pitched at all, Tsuna, what _are_ you saying?

Lambo sighed, before shaking his head.

He loved his family, but sometimes, just _sometimes…_

* * *

**Extra: A normal day in the Varia**

When Xanxus wasn't busy yelling for more meat (no, not beef, he wanted mutton. No, not _that_ type of mutton, dumbass, but lamb-chops. No, he didn't want lamb-chops anymore, he wanted beef again. No, didn't the waiter listen properly? He obviously said he wanted _chicken_ in orange sauce and spaghetti. What type of spaghetti was that, it was undercooked! Ah, that ruined his appetite, give him beef. No, not _that_ type of beef, trash!), he was busy yelling at his subordinates (and the author will not even bother with the list).

So in the rare moments of silence (also known as the twelve hours of Xanxus's beauty sleep) a person can hear Squalo's yells of VOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will you GET OUT OF THE OF KITCHEN!

Why the kitchen, you ask?

As Xanxus was always asking for different types of food, there was a lot wasted. All of these foods were eaten by the cloak mushroom, Jared. He had a bottomless pit of a stomach, in which he would answer that he was a 'growing boy' hitting 'puberty' and to get away from 'the lack of girls' he would comfort himself instead by 'binge-eating'.

Squalo, in response to this, would yell, as mentioned above: VOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will you GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN! Because he wanted food too, thank you very much, and Lussuria just made a cake he wanted to try and just because he was a bottomless pit did not mean entitlement to the Varia's whole food stock.

So it almost always ended up with Squalo's sword being buried in his head, even while it was blocked by a knife and a few more sneaked mouthfuls of strawberry/mango cake.

"Squalo, are you challenging me?" A crouch in fighting position even as Lussuria sang a horrid, sappy song he had learnt from watching that _totally moving and wonderful_ drama. It was the title song, actually, he told one of the terrified chefs, and would he please listen to him?

The chefs were already fleeing the kitchen.

On the other side, Mammon was going over his bank book, for the seventieth time. In the hour. What person would he rip off next? He chuckled darkly, even as Belphegor behind him

_Ushishishishishi… Ushishishishishi…_

ed and made him annoyed and ruined his concentration for detailed planning.

So he made an illusion of himself as he himself floated away from the explosion that came from the kitchen. Probably Jared and Squalo again. Not that he cared. As long as they didn't touch his bank account.

Belphegor noticed immediately that it was an illusion and frowned.

"No one gets away from the Prince!" He went out into the hallway to bump into Levi.

"The boss has woken up. He says to be quiet."

A terrified servant rushed to the kitchen, informing that Xanxus-sama wanted beef again. And not _that_ type of beef, but beef (not that he knew what that meant, or the chefs knew what that meant, and Xanxus himself was a bit confused as to what he himself meant but no matter).

"The Prince doesn't have to listen to you," Belphegor said, smiling manically as he peered through his fringe at him. Levi's gelled eyebrow twitched as the blonde walked away.

_Ushishishishishi…_

Now where was Mammon… He just had to touch his bank account and he would come flying anyway.

_Ushishishi… the prince is so smart!_

* * *

**Extra: the day that the world ended**

Once upon a time, the world ended.

Yes, the story starts with the world ending. How does that work?

Tsuna frowned in confuzzlement.

He did not get the point of the story at all. Because really, the world hadn't ended yet. It was quite obvious that it hadn't ended yet. The sun was still shining outside, and his neighbours were still walking their dog…

Then Reborn bombed the room again, and suddenly he saw stars.

…Maybe it made sense to start with the world ending…

* * *

**Extra: The time when Yamamoto was playing a game**

"Haha!" Yamamoto laughed as he raced across the calm, sunny, grassy plain on a nice summer's day. The birds were all flying away, chirping and there was a clear river in front. Ah, look, a butterfly! It was peaceful…

He dodged another missile.

"What type of game is this?" He laughed as he screamed over Tsuna's screams of HIIIIIIEEEEE and Alice's grumbles of _why the heck am I here anyway_ and Gokudera's JUUUUUDAIMEE!

A second of silence. Cue three sets of dead-pan stares. He loved their reactions, they were so funny! He dodged yet another missile, pulling Tsuna and Alice so they dodged as well (Gokudera got his shield up, he was okay). What could he say to mess up their minds even more?

"I mean, those toys that the kid is playing with are so realistic nowadays!" He laughed happily even as he put his hands behind his head and kept running next to Gokudera. "Do they have a speaker in them or something, so that it has that BOOM sound when it hits the ground? How interesting!"

Disbelief.

"Baseball idiot," Gokudera grumbled.

Ah, this was the best entertainment! He laughed (he really was laughing) because his friends were just so fun to tease.

* * *

**Extra: The school's black market**

"Come! The newest hot pictures!"

Students all swarmed to the table to bid for the pictures.

In all, there were several booths.

_Gokudera-sama's cool and awesome hot pictures! See them all! (we finally sneaked a photo of him smiling!)_

**Yamamoto pictures, see his sunny smile! Baseball special today!**

_**Alice-pictures! A new sneak shot of her enigmatic face as she sleeps! Truly charismatic!**_

Kyoko-chwan! Our innocent flower recently started knitting! See her gentle, motherly smile!

And the biggest table were none of them.

A baby with an orange-ribbon on his hat was sitting behind a large table, grinning at his successful business. Above him was the placard

**Embarrassing blackmail material**

* * *

**I know, maybe people would prefer to have a REAL chapter, but I really had fun writing all these little Extras for you all. As thanks, I guess, for sticking with me for so long. When I was listing you all, I realised that most, or a LOT of my reviewers had stuck with me for the whole journey, when I started my fic in 2010 on November and joined the MHJ community of readers around the third chapter. And kept on reviewing and reading and encouraging. I wanted something HAPPY for you all!**

**So here it is. My personal favourite is gender-switching and Varia. And Yamamoto. Because I think that Tsuna really could be a shoujo heroine, and Alice could totally be the 'aloof, bad-ass, smart, cool, perfect' bishie guy in all those shoujo mangas. Don't you think? It cracked me up.**

**I love Reborn. He's so fun to write. XD**

**And how can I say thank you enough? Well, putting you all in a list seems so impersonal. I took a few hours to list you all up on Excel, (which is kind of why I don't really have a real chappie here) but I don't really regret it because now I think I remember every one of your names! **

**Haha… ^^**

**Tell me which Extra you liked the best!**

**These are all the reviewers that have ever reviewed. Thank you! You are all the best people that a writer could ever wish for! (I noticed there were no reviewers with an account name starting with U! I was surprised! Haha)**

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	44. Oh hello, mystery, how are you?

Xanxus frowned. He had that tingling sense behind his ears. It always came when something annoying (or something bothersome) was about to happen, or when his beef was uncooked. He checked the plate in front of him. No, his beef was cooked perfectly.

Then what?

As he scowled out the window artistically, his legs crossed in that _exact_ way that he knew looked powerful and cool, he idly wondered what it was.

Hmph.

He closed his eyes and waited. It should probably come soon.

A crash from the front door just made him irritable and pissed.

That was _too _soon, dammit.

* * *

I cursed. "What's with this place?" I reloaded my gun and shot at another few traps so that they would be triggered by something _other_ than us. There seemed no way through except flying. And even that had its hazards, according to Jared…

"Yes, the Varia thinks it's amusing to set traps that people have to pass through before reaching them," he said quite blankly even as he used his knives to deflect incoming… were those _missiles?_

"Are those missiles?" I asked disbelievingly even as I shook some disgusting spider webs out of my hair (and the chopsticks _in_ my hair) and shot at another suspicious looking tree root that sprouted spikes the moment my bullet touched it. I carefully avoided them.

…was that blood on those spikes?

"A small prototype from one of the Varia engineers. They test them out at intruders in the forest."

"How does the Varia pass then?" I asked, hoping for some secret path without spiders, bugs, humid forest, burning hot sunlight, and ten thousand death traps.

"The Varia enjoys fighting through the forest."

"Ah, I would think so, those psychopaths." At Jared's enquiring look, I nodded. "Yes, it includes you. Do you know how crazy you become ten years later?"

"How do you know how I will become ten years later?" he asked, his eyes narrowed in speculation.

"Don't ask…" I groaned, as I stopped to bash my head on a tree. I paused in surprise at the hand stopping my forehead bumping the tree.

"That tree has poison secretion. It's better not to touch it, especially areas around the face."

I blinked at that, and then sighed as I kept running, shooting anything suspicious and dodging the things I couldn't shoot at. "How does Varia get its job requests? No-one can even get in!"

"We have an internet page designed by Lussuria. Most people get put off by the forest, the other half by the webpage. But the Varia still has enough funds to go on, partly because of Xanxus's connection with the Ninth, and partly because the Varia has a very high success rate and enough people can stomach the hot pink webpage to submit their request…"

This Jared said without needing to catch breath, jumping over several spike traps, dodging seven arrows, catching two missiles headed for him and one for me without letting it explode and even more impressive, in an impassive 'debriefing' voice.

"Uh, I've heard of the Varia's horrifying webpage, but it never occurred to me it would be horrifyingly cute… What an interesting tactic," I mused.

Then I paused, even as I jumped _high_ over something really dangerous looking. Was that a bear trap?

Wait, webpage. Jared said most people contacted the Varia by webpage. I was looking for a person who had tracked Tsuna for Xanxus to kill, in the fight for the title of Tenth Vongola Boss. I remembered Squalo's words when he was retrieving the fake Vongola Rings…

_"Don't." I said quietly, looking at him seriously in the eye. "Get your rings and leave."_

_Squalo threw a narrowed glance at me, the gun, and his sword and lowered his sword slightly. Throughout all this, Tsuna had been staring at the gun in my hand in shock._

_"Aren't you going to kill me?" He asked in his raspy deep voice, still smirking._

_"I will if you kill him." I replied quietly._

_"Why not now?"_

_"You're needed."_

_"What a Brighteye thing to say. Looks like what __that __person said was true after all." He shot a look at Tsuna. "Ha, this boy isn't worth it anyway," he finally said, dropping Tsuna and picked up the box before blurring up to a roof somewhere. I bent down, helping Tsuna sit up._

That person. _That person. _That person, that Spartan teacher Anise had been trying to track, that person that sent Jared (because my thoughts on Jared being the informant was both right and wrong – he was obviously under someone other than Xanxus) and…

My eyes narrowed. I've never thought of this before. How did Mukuro find Tsuna? Xanxus found Tsuna because this mysterious person, but if there was some other means, then I needed to ask Mukuro to find out. Xanxus might have found out that way as well.

Iemitsu was a prominent person in the family after all. He couldn't have hid his family that well, even if it was nearly half way across the world. There were Mafia in Japan. It would probably be the best to assume that Iemitsu had a fake name, the first precaution to hiding his identity.

It made _sense._ What Italian guy had a last name such as Sawada? It was probably Nana's maiden name or something. The second precaution was to hide his visits. Those were much harder to hide, which explained Iemitsu's long absences.

There were nearly no records on Iemitsu, but in the Brighteye archive there was nearly a whole folder full of Mafia gold. Info was rare. I would have to ask for records on Iemitsu and his behaviour with the Ninth and other subordinates. Colonello hadn't acted like he had knew him before Reborn did, Lal didn't either, Oregano didn't and Basil definitely didn't – he only found Tsuna from a photo. Extremely dangerous visual information, which meant Basil was immensely trusted but not trusted _enough_…

How closely had Iemitsu tried to protect his family?

I ducked under a tree branch (which shot something wet, green, and _slimey_ at me. It sizzled when it hit grass, and a nearby grasshopper twitched and died. I took it as a cue to hold my breath) and kept following Jared's cloak. From a point I couldn't place, he had started leading. That was extremely dangerous, of course; I couldn't trust him _yet_, but the general direction he was following was the right one so I just continued.

It wasn't as if it was particularly important now – Xanxus's fight with Tsuna had put him in Mafia spotlight. Only Reborn's fearsome reputation kept assassins from coming after him. Why else would Reborn sleep in the same room as Tsuna? So someone tipping off where Tsuna was wasn't that important now but…

Tsuna's safety was first on my mission's list. I should have noticed it sooner. I wondered how Varia found Tsuna, but why didn't I ask myself how _Mukuro_ did? He wasn't psychic enough to invade everyone's minds, so someone must have tipped him off, or he possessed someone with the information. In either cases, both would be extremely important Mafia.

Or someone vindictive to Vongola, of course. I couldn't forget that. And of course, what about the theory of a person trying to sabotage Brighteye missions?

I sighed.

So another talk with Mukuro was in order huh…

It'll probably come sooner or later. I hadn't left that strange red box he left me in that dream thingy back home in the apartment right? I thought back, and rummaged in one of the back pockets of my backpack.

Yup, there it was.

Seems like a conversation was in order sooner than I thought. Lovely, fantastic, whatever one would call it.

Then I cursed. Even calm-ten-years-younger Jared cursed, as we climbed a mountain, and this stupid wire made this boulder fall on us. As I ran away as fast as I could back the way we came, (it was hard to run sideways, the most obvious option to escape, when there were trees that were loaded with traps) I slapped my forehead.

Why was everything so much more _complicated_ when it was in real life?

Just as we dodged the boulder, who had went off course by this random tree, and started climbing this newly flattened, trap free path, there was an explosion in front. Jared's eyes narrowed.

"That came from the Varia mansion."

"How do you know?"

"I've heard the front door being broken in so many times it has been ingrained into my memory."

Seriously?

"But," he continued, "none of the Varia members would destroy it in such a style, which means…"

"There's an intruder," I finished. "Great. On the one day I visit the Varia mansion there's an intruder." I continued grumbling, even as Jared next to me seemed to crack a smile at the curses I was throwing at Bill and the author of this stupid world (I was beginning to regret not going into _Midsummer Night's Dream_).

I whipped my head up. "Did you just smile?"

"No," he said, his voice as solemn as the most grave priest.

I raised an eyebrow quizzically at that, before shrugging and moving on.

* * *

Belphegor grinned.

"_Ushishishi… _what do we have here?" He flicked his knives into the air, and the wires held them up. "Are you really daring to attack the Varia in their home territory?" His smile only grew wider at the determined looks on the two intruder's faces.

"Brighteyes," Levi rumbled, his eyebrows drawing in, even as he prepared to launch his umbrellas in the air. The lightning wouldn't burn anything Xanxus liked in this room. It was bare for a reason.

"VOOI! We haven't done anything, bright-eyes!" Squalo yelled, stepping up before all the others, who had already drifted in nonchalantly to stand beside the others. Lussuria had come, yes, Mammon had too, even if only make sure the Brighteyes were really there.

Belphegor, Mammon, Lussuria, Levi, himself, that star brat was still in Japan doing who-knows-what and Xanxus was still in his room. The bastard, Squalo thought even as he pointed his sword the more dangerous looking one. The one with kitchen knives in his hands and silver eyes.

In Squalo's mind, anyone hard core enough to fight with kitchen knives in Mafia was dangerous. The girl didn't look like a pushover either; her eyes were flickering from red to pink to red again.

His face didn't even twitch when he made the connection.

The Red-Eyed Brighteye, who spoke a few words and stopped the Bovino Family war against the Calcassa… She was legendary. Why were they here?

"We've gotten a report from Alice," the red-eyed one said, stepping forward confidently even as her voice was low and dangerous. Blunt, to the point. They both knew that there was no point in tact that sort of entrance, "that you got aid from a person who has been on the Brighteye list for years."

Alice? Squalo narrowed his eyes, mind working calmly and methodically. She was the Brighteye with the other Tenth, the weak-faced brown shrimp who somehow beat Xanxus in a fight.

The other issue – who the heck would get on the Brighteye hit list and come out for years?

He kept a careful eye on both of them (the man was twirling his knives around his fingers – dangerous and foolish, but one wouldn't do it unless they were stupid or they were truly skilled, and he was the latter just by looking at the muscles) and his own side. He didn't want anyone attacking before they needed to.

Brighteyes were not to be trifled with. That was the only reason why he had backed away from killing the brown-haired shrimp anyway. The yellow-eyed kid had guts, to point at gun at him, which had helped her case of course.

"We've dealt with many strange customers regarding the brown-haired shrimp," he only retorted harshly back, his voice rasping over a few unpleasant syllables.

The woman didn't even seem fazed.

"Was there one that seemed blind?"

Squalo searched his memory.

"You would have to ask the boss for that."

"I thought Xanxus didn't deal with the customers straight," the woman narrowed her eyes, gripping something out of their pocket and starting to pull it out. He tensed, and he could _feel_ Belphegor's eagerness to fight.

Fighting junkie.

"Sometimes he…"

He trailed off, as he looked past them towards the end of the Varia's garden, where there was a gate that _another_ two intruders simply jumped over. A flash of yellow eyes confirmed that one of them was another Brighteye.

If rumours were true, Squalo frowned, that no Brighteye had the same eye colour, then the Brighteye was the girl-with-the-guts that pointed a gun at him. The other's cloak was too familiar. So the Star bastard had come back.

The girl looked at the scene and sighed, bashing her head on the star bastard's shoulder. The cloaked guy looked as surprised as Squalo did (when did they become so close?)

"Why, why the only day when I go to Varia mansion…"

The red-eyed woman forced herself to relax as she glared at him, (he was never going to stop pointing his sword at her, no matter what glares she threw), and retracted her hand from her pocket even as she turned around.

"Alice!" She squealed, her voice entirely different from before. It sounded almost… plastic and girly.

"Liza, Jack," the girl, Alice, said. "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to see my beloved little sister, of course!"

She twirled Alice around so that the girl was facing Varia's gate and she herself was facing the broken door of the Varia mansion.

To his shock, the woman's eyes changed from pink to red, as she gave him a look _'this will be settled later'_ before going back into a cooing, gentle older sister.

Squalo smirked.

"VOOOOOIII, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY INTRUDERS TODAY?" He yelled, just to irritate everybody and loosen the tension.

The yellow-eyed Brighteye obviously didn't come with the other two. And with her around, they didn't seem to want to do anything overly violent. Even the dangerous man had stopped twirling his knives to give the smaller girl a hug.

Good.

They had to keep her here so the other two wouldn't go crazy.

And of course, there was the issue of _him_…

Jared was standing a bit aside, staring at the scene with a stone-carved face.

* * *

Xanxus opened his eyes at the scene before him, at Jared, at the three Brighteyes, and just grunted.

"The info is in the file on the desk, now leave." He closed his eyes again.

"Boss!" Squalo immediately protested, "that's confidential client information!"

Xanxus smirked and Squalo backed down.

"I'm glad you were so cooperative," that pink-eyed woman that was hugging that grey-haired girl from that _*&J%P * _family. She had an aura to her that he knew was dangerous, but not in the way of giving an adrenaline filled fight. No use in antagonising people like that. Besides, if _that man _really did come back, then all the more interesting for him.

A good deal for both sides.

Then the grey-haired girl spoke up.

"Xanxus, I'm giving Jared to you."

He ignored her.

"Whatever," he heard her sigh, as she deflected one of Belphegor's knives carelessly (and the man with silver eyes cut the wires before it even cut the pink-eyed one). "I knew that it would come to this eventually. Go on a trip across the world? Get ignored. I don't know why I even bother these days…"

"Alice-chwan!" The pink-eyed one nuzzled her nose on the grey hair. "It's fine, right! We got the info you wanted for you! But we'll have to give it to Anise first, so wait a bit, k?"

"Yes, yes. Now I can go back earlier than I expected."

Alice stood up, in the corner of Xanxus's half-closed eyes. "Jared, you'll find my number in your pocket. Let's go then."

She gave another world-suffering sigh before moving off, clutching the file he had given them in her arms. The other two followed her, in a doting parent sort of way, but in fact disengaging every trap they had set for them.

Impressive.

Xanxus burst out laughing when they were out of the room.

Interesting, they were so interesting!

* * *

"Liza, Jack," I said in the voice that already tried to repress all my irritation at their dotingness of 'Alice, I haven't seen you for so long *hug*' and 'Alice-baby! You've grown taller again! And where's your muscles? *hug*', "I know you're close to me to disengage all the traps set for me and everything, but why do you have to hug me?"

"But we haven't seen you for so long, Alice!" Liza said, succeeding in stealing the file from my arms. Damn, I wanted to sneak a peek at that. "But we have to go soon, so bye! At least try to mail me!"

"Train more, baby!" Jack whined in my ear. "You can still become a good fighter yet," he said. Then added, "With lots of effort."

I glared at him. He just laughed.

Then they were gone. Probably hugged me so much because they wanted the file I had, but still.

It was nice.

I only realised I had a goofy smile on my face when I went back to the inn I had booked for one night. It was there, in the mirror when I looked at it, and my face immediately started relaxing when I saw it but…

It was just so _comforting_. Liza and Jack were here, they were still the same, flamboyant people. People I could trust to answer my calls for help anywhere, and fully _understood_ me.

It was so rare these days. I had forgotten the warmth of good old reassurance of family backing you up. No matter how meagre they gave me of a sense of family, it was still there.

I was still smiling slightly when I went back to sleep, listing all the things I had to do (ask for a copy of those files, steal Jared's number so I can ask for updates, call Grey just in case something came up, and of course Mukuro…).

I held the weird red box thing in my hand when I went to sleep.

And sure enough, he was there smiling and smug on the couch again.

"What did you want me for, Brighteye?"

"How did you find Tsuna? That's my question."

Mukuro's eyes widened as his smile got even wider. "What an interesting question, but I guess I have to answer truthfully, don't I?"

"I don't know if you're answering truthfully or not. Mukuro, but in the case of your 'favour' to me, I do expect you to answer truthfully."

"But this is so interesting, very interesting." He laughed, going _kufufufu_ over something even as he twirled his trident.

"Just tell me," I snapped, my nerves grated by his _kufufufu_s. He smirked at me with half-lidded eyes.

"Nothing from the Brighteye information network? Or maybe not enough? What an interesting man that person would be then…"

"Man?" I perked up. "Tell me more."

The yellow curtains billowed, even as he leaned his elbows on his knees. "Oh yes, it was a man. A very interesting man, one day approaching me and asking me when I was in Kokuyo if I was interested in capturing a mafia boss."

He chuckled his creepy laugh again.

"I had been planning to lie low for awhile, after breaking out of prison recently, but when I heard it was the young future _Vongola_ boss, who wouldn't act? Why do you ask?"

"That's one question that I would put on your favour card, so I won't answer that," I replied distantly, my mind whirring. "But you haven't told me what he looked like."

Mukuro's pineapple hair, the strangely neat zig-zag split in his hair suddenly became closer for a second, before going up as he leaned even closer and stood up.

"That's the most important thing, Alice-chan," he smiled, very disarmingly. He looked like any other fifteen year old, innocent and maybe a bit rebellious. Until of course, he opened his eyes and let everyone see the power and cunning in them. "I can't remember."

I blinked.

"How can you _not_ remember?" I asked in puzzlement. "You have a good memory, don't you?"

"So therefore it's interesting I don't remember," he said simply. "I'm a bit irritated about that too, you know."

I raised an eyebrow at that, for he didn't look like it at all. As cool as a cucumber, he was.

Suddenly, an ice-cold cucumber dropped onto Mukuro's head, and fell to the floor. Mukuro stared at it with the most surprised _WTF_ expression I've ever seen on him.

That made me crack a smile.

"Did you do that on purpose?" he asked, his eyebrow twitching.

"Of course not. Anything else?" I asked, eager to get more information and change the topic.

Mukuro let the cucumber slide. Thank goodness.

"The only thing I could remember were his eyes. The most strange eyes they were. Clear ones. I would tell you more, but you seem to be waking up…"

"What? I didn't set an alarm this morning though – "

But I was cut off, as Mukuro was once again proved correct.

* * *

An explosion rocked the street, and I peered out of my window (near the bottom this time, I was at a _normal_ hotel) and I groaned at the sight.

Black suited people were running around _everywhere_ and there was a bigger commotion on the main road. What was it this time? This was near Cavallone territory, one of the three big Families. There weren't usually riots here, which was why this was a better district than most.

I stepped out of the room, and was making to go towards the normal wooden door when the innkeeper whisper-yelled across the room towards me.

"Little girl," I twitched from the name, "don't go outside. It seems like there are two mafia groups fighting for territory here," he said.

Smiling as politely towards him, as one should respect elders, I shook my head. "I'm well-versed in fighting, sir. Thank you for your kindness."

But just in case, I pulled out my two guns from my fake pockets (the innkeeper's eyes bulged out at that) and lit the chopsticks in my hair with slight flame, just in case I needed them quickly. The innkeeper stuttered.

"Wh-what family do you come from?"

I pondered, before shrugging. It wouldn't hurt.

"Vongola."

The innkeeper nearly spewed out blood. His face was _that_ shocked.

"Err, please come again."

"Sure!" I cheerfully waved, just to make fun of him and went out the door into the mess. I immediately went to the side of the building and jumped onto a crate stack, leading up to roof, in which I covered with grey flames so no-one would see it and climb up after me.

Then I surveyed the situation.

Black-suited people firing at everyone, some snipers on roofs here and there.

Nothing serious. It wasn't Cavallone related (or I was friend-bound to tell Dino, who most probably knew already if it was related to him), or Vongola, which I was part duty-bound to tell about the incident and _why_ it happened.

Being Brighteye was annoying sometimes. They expected you to know _everything_.

As I saw nothing I needed to do, and these big brawls were usually solved better if no-one outside interfered, I covered myself with grey flames, turned myself invisible, and made for the airport.

By the time…

I would probably get back earlier than I predicted. Maybe I could catch Yamamoto in the morning of Lambo's trial or something. I wouldn't tag along, of course (Lampo and Lambo together with _Verde?_ No thank you, Lightning users were always eccentrics) but just to check if Yamamoto was okay.

He was pretty good at hiding his emotions at times. A little too well.

If he was making fun of Gokudera by laughing at, well, nothing, then he was probably okay.

I made that my goal as I settled into my comfortable seat and ordered some hash browns.

I swear I never got any happy things happening to me in Italy. Really, training, parties, riots, Varia…

Sighing, I just turned around and munched the crunchy hash brown as I turned back to my crappy romance novels. Now all this was interesting.

On the plane trip, I was productive. Reading and absorbing the plot (Yuki was cheated by Masashiro, but Yamamoto (it was such a common name) loved Yuki and Kisana at the same time, but he liked Yuki more, and he knew the girl Masashiro was cheating with was Kisana… very interesting) while thinking.

The eyes.

The eyes stood out to Mukuro, making him remember him. The tiniest detail, the eyes.

And the Brighteyes only existed for their eyes. It was like a watered down version or something. I frowned.

Even though there could be _no_ correlation at all, I couldn't shake the feeling.

I viciously bit into yet another hash brown as Yamamoto passionately took Yuki in his arms and kissed her. I grimaced at the image in my brain. It felt strange reading your friend's name in a book.

* * *

"_Alice was still so cute, even after turning into a teen, Anise!" Liza squealed. "It was such a coincidence that she was there right when we went…"_

"_It wasn't a coincidence," green eyes flashed backwards at the woman who was still happily recounting her tale. "She was going to put it all together sooner or later, so I set her a message."_

"_But you were sending us anyway!"_

_A snort. "You two would go overboard, and the only one who can get you two to calm down is Jack's little baby student and your __self-__proclaimed beloved little sister, isn't it?"_

"_It was still dangerous you know," Liza said, a bit more serious._

"_Of course I knew that. But these files you got were gold."_

_Liza looked at Anise, who had been hunched over the computer since the message Alice had sent her. And? The unspoken question hung in the air heavily._

"_My hunch was right."_

_Liza immediately got up. "We'll have to notify the others right away."_

"_No." _

_Hard red eyes flashed. She had known death already once, had experienced the pain of losing a loved one, of family. Anise better had a damn good reason why she was stopping her. __Liza knew her best friend__. Anise knew of how she had died right before her fiancé. Nothing was going to stop her from protecting family. Nothing._

"_Why?" She asked, voice tight and controlled._

_Anise looked up at her_

* * *

"I'm back."

Grey smiled.

"Welcome home."

A warm fluttery feeling in my chest. _Home._

"You have a report from Nezu-sensei."

Huh? Nezu?

"Oh okay. Uh, Nezu. The guy who ripped off everyone and I sent to Shimon to… oh yes!"

Enma! I had sent him to Shimon to report on them!

I quickly busied myself, propping all the folders and surprised at how detailed they were. Nezu was a good info gatherer, surprisingly enough. Though he had been a fraud for so many years, so he must have been meticulous in many things…

I went through the files, until… I focused on the page in front of me.

This student… I think I've met him before. But when? I couldn't really remember. All I could remember were…

My eyes widened.

A strange pair of eyes...

* * *

**Why Yes! I am back!**

**Thank you to all of my reviewers – the gender-bending one was the all-time favourite… as expected. I think everyone could see how Alice was the 'aloof, shoujo-bishounen, who is handsome, has ulterior motives, smart, strong, compassionate, but still dedicated to one person' that can never exist in real life… and Tsuna as the clumsy shoujo heroine, who is nice, gentle, clumsy, accepts everyone in her heart…**

**Yeah. XD People mentioned making them gender-bend for a day. That seems interesting. ^^**

**I was glad to name you all! Yes, it took a bit of time, but you all deserved it. XD I'm just so HAPPY! **

**And guess what… YOHOHOHO, the plot is thickening. This has been foreshadowed for **_**such**_** a long time. Like, Mukuro, when he first attacks Tsuna and co. he mentions, **_**that man**_** as well. It's so exciting to finally reach here, this plot point, right now!**

**Okay. Ranted enough.**

**Thank you for reading, sticking to this story for so long, and I hope you all continue reading and reviewing!**


	45. I am fine, thank you

**My apology at the bottom? TT_TT SORRY! I hope you enjoy it, though it's kind of err... and I'm really sorry, it'll pick up soon I promise! Next chapter! Promise! I mean, it's holidays by next chapter so I could even write longer!**_  
_

**...I'm sorry... *trudges sadly away***

* * *

_Lampo dangled a pocket-watch in his hand, sitting on his chair with his legs crossed and staring out the windows of his new castle. He inwardly sighed. What a pain… he hated brats! Why was the Lightning Guardian a _brat?

"_So this is where you were, Lampo," Giotto said with a slight smile as he appeared behind him to look at what he was looking at (which was the watch he gave him, warming his heart a little)._

"_I've decided to make this my territory for the rest of the time we're staying here" Lampo said without turning around because who else would pop out into existence and say mundane boring stuff like that except for Giotto? Asari would do his weird 'haha' thing first, G would just rant, Alayne wouldn't even bother to say a hello and dump water over his head, Knuckle would say something akin the lines of extreme worship and try evangelise him, Alaude wouldn't care, and well, nufufus creeped him out._

"_It's your turn next," Giotto said as solemn as ever (very uncharacteristic – his daddy instincts probably kicked in after seeing that kid clone of his, that tenth wasn't it? Or was it the eleventh? Or maybe it was just G who forced him to be solemn…) He entertained the idea of saying he didn't want to do it to Giotto's face._

_Then Giotto _just _had to say those damn words. "I'm counting on you."_

_Damn it. He couldn't wriggle out now._

"_You realise I'm a lord. As a big shot, I only have to do what I want to," (yes, he was trying to wriggle out anyway. He had the unspoken hope that one day he won't become a pushover). __Lampo wearily closed one of his eyes as he played with the watch again._

"_That won't do," Giotto said seriously behind him (and this time he knew it wasn't forced). "What will happen to the inheritance of the Guardian of the Lightning Ring?"_

"_I can't stand that snot-nosed brat," Lampo said truthfully of course, as usual, while stretching and eyeing the carpet. It looked comfortable. _

_No, don't get sidetracked. He meant, usually after death you get to _R.I.P _right? But nooooo, he still had Vongola duties even four hundred years after he died. And he woke up just for one snot-nosed kid!_

_Gah._

"_Man, I can't believe he's the Guardian of the Lightning Ring," he said and got off the chair to collapse on the floor. It _was_ comfortable. "I refuse to deem him worthy." Dangling the damn watch from his hand, he knew he would give in soon. Why was he a pushover again?_

_Right. Because Giotto gave him a family and saved his life a hundred times over._

_(Of course, ignoring the fact that seventy percent of life-threatening incidents were _because _of Giotto…)_

"_Lampo. Lampo!" Giotto insisted. Lampo sighed. If G put Giotto up for this, he was going to murder him when he left the castle. He wasn't going to do it! He wasn't!_

…_Dang it._

"_Geez… fine already. I just have to do it right?" Lampo got off the floor and looked out the window, mournfully asking where the stars were. There were none! _

_He could_ feel_ Giotto smile. He mentally sighed again. _

"_Can't say no to you, Primo. I'll deem the brat worthy if he manages to make his way here." Sighing he faded… and appeared in the (tenth? Eleventh?) bosses room. They, the boy and… _another brat?_ Why was there another brat? But whatever. They were talking about Alayne and Asari._

_Better show himself then._

"_Well, speak of the devil," the fedora baby said._

"_Adult Lambo?" said the Giotto clone._

_Who the heck was Lambo? "What are you talking about? My name is Lampo."_

_Disbelieving look from Giotto clone. He stared back at him dully._

_What a pain._

* * *

"What, Yuni?" I croaked into the phone as I drank some water. My eyes were still super-glued together from sleep, damn it. Why phone me in the unholy hour of… nine thirty? "Amusement park? What for? Lampo? _Huuuh_?" Yuni giggled on the other side and waited for me to wake up. It took a few seconds.

…wait.

Oh. That.

"Yamamoto should be there waiting for you already," Yuni said sweetly and I just couldn't bear to say that I wanted more sleep. She needed a good role model right? Actually, how old was she now? I wondered a bit before shrugging and hanging up.

I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, stuck it up with four chopsticks (Grey was getting some shopping, and hair dressing was one of his many skills which I lack) and went down the elevator. I didn't even care about man hordes anymore., so for once the man hordes found me and driving all these bargains that had too many zeroes behind them to count when I exited the hotel.

"Yo, Yamamoto!" I waved, making my way down slowly and Yamamoto looked surprised at my… sudden celebrity status.

Huh.

I only lacked a red carpet.

Yamamoto grinned, slapping my shoulder friendlily. Colonello was next to him, his huge rifle double his size and eyebrows irritated at the people following me.

"Can't you do something about your fans, hey?"

I shrugged. "We could, I guess."

"Then let's get going, shall we?" Yamamoto beamed out, somehow relaxed and happier than before. I raised an eyebrow, before leading them both towards the car park.

"Sure. How did your trial go, Yamamoto? I'm sorry I couldn't be there."

"No problem! I failed once, but haha…" he trailed off, scratching his head sheepishly even as he acted unfazed at the sudden bodyguards stopping the man crowds from following us into the dark car park.

"He passed, hey!" Colonello said with a smirk smile.

"That's good, as I expected," I bobbed my head vacantly and walked forward. "I knew you would be able to do it."

Yamamoto blushed a little as he scratched his cheek. I looked at him. He scratched his head a lot when he was embarrassed didn't he?

"You think so? Thanks! I mean it," he rushed to assure me at my eyebrow. "I could see everyone doubting me because I was doubting myself but it's okay! I've learnt my lesson, haha." He smiled. "If I don't keep calm, I can't keep the family together now, can I?"

Oh Yamamoto…

I looked away as I stopped in front of a Mercedes.

"But remember keeping calm and rejecting your feelings are different, Yamamoto," I said even as I remembered the jaded eyes of ten-years-later Yamamoto. He was tired, his laugh not entirely real, even in the happy atmosphere of my funeral when I was hit by the bazooka. He had been calm, but happy? Happy was another thing.

Yamamoto looked surprised at the sudden comment, before smiling and ruffling my hair (which I felt was strange, because it was usually what I did to Lambo and Fuuta).

"Of course."

I let myself have a small grin as I headed to the only cheap car in the place and called Grey.

"Grey," I asked even as I pulled out a key and unlocked the car, "can you come back and drive us to the amusement park?"

He didn't bother asking what 'us' meant.

"Of course, Miss. Let me put the prawns in the freezer first."

"Okay."

So for the next few minutes, Yamamoto and I leaned down and asked Colonello about his rifle, which he described, in detail, with much pride and heys and maggots.

* * *

I stood next to Yuni as Reborn held up the stamp rally.

I. Was. Not. Interested.

"Can I go to the toilet?" I asked with my eyes on the Ferris wheel. None of the rides I wanted to go on were on the stamp rally. Why was I here anyway? Lambo was going to fine with a dedicated Gokudera's male-PMS, Yamamoto the-nice-guy and Yuni-the-angel (no kidding, she practically is).

Yuni smiled.

"Alice-san," she said formally with a hint of amusement, "of course you can go to the toilet."

"Thanks."

I grinned and held up a hand in goodbye as headed for the opposite direction of the toilet and for the Ferris wheel.

Gokudera noticed my leaving too late, because just when I rounded the corner of the building, his shout echoed to me.

"How dare that damn freaky eyes escape this trial!"

Yamamoto answering laugh echoed behind me even as I joined the line for the Ferris wheel. How loud did he laugh anyway? A few hundred decibels? I shook my head. Should I even be surprised anymore?

I sighed as I stepped onto the Ferris wheel. Probably not. I mean, I dealt with explosives on a daily basis.

And so I spent the rest of two hours, Ferris wheel (ignoring lightning from the go-karts), café, tourist shop, mirror house (ignoring sudden smoke from the robot ride), fairy floss…

All the while wondering about the strange pair of eyes.

Eyes, eyes, eyes. What were about the eyes that were important? Tsuna's eyes turned colour too, I'm sure I knew someone with heterochromic eyes… oh yes, Mukuro and Chrome. The Brighteye family was an example of eyes-being-important.

There were many reasons why eyes were important. What were strange about those strangely pale eyes? Nothing, that's for sure, but for some reason (even though it gave me such an impression yesterday) I couldn't remember that student ID's face.

Why?

I sipped my hot chocolate (the weather was kind of cold, and I wondered how Lambo could even stand with only a cow-suit) and happily waved at Tsuna and the others as they went to the exit.

"Hey, I'm back from my toilet trip."

Gokudera shivered. Then he started shaking. I looked at him in concern. Did he get diarrhoea?

Instead, he exploded. "WHERE WERE YOU ALL THIS TIME YOU F&* ING FREAKY EYES?"

I sipped my hot chocolate, smiling at him calmly.

"Why, on a toilet trip of course."

"For the WHOLE DAY?"

"Why yes," I said, enjoying the funny faces he was making. "I made a detour to the tourist shop, the Ferris wheel, the mirror house, and the shops to by some sweets and then went to the café to have a meal but of course, ultimately it was a toilet trip."

Fon was smiling, his mouth covered by his sleeve but I knew he was smiling, and Colonello just smirked. Reborn just frowned, then smirked, while Yuni gave a small giggle before coming to hug me. "You missed out on a lot of fun things, Alice-san!"

Gokudera just ranted more. Or was about to anyway, before Tsuna came up looking exhausted, fried, burnt, and just plain tired.

"Tsuna," I frowned before going up to him and brushing him off like the old times. "Why do you have leaves in your hair?"

One word said it all…

"Lambo…" he said with a slightly red face. Gokudera rushed to him immediately, asking if he was okay (and luckily, getting off my case. Yamamoto just seemed ridiculously happy for some reason, smiling his head off at the scene that we presented to him, I guess).

"Oh." I frowned at Lambo, plucking him out of Tsuna's arms. Ruffling his hair a bit to get the leaves out of _his_ hair, I looked at Lambo. "What did you do, Lambo?"

Lambo looked at me and stiffened, trying to immediately stop crying.

"I… I wanted to get cotton candy!" He blurted out.

I ignored Tsuna who was watching this exchange in interest. After all, if no-one curbed his spoiled nature, how would he become who he could be?

"I have some, so I'll give it to you." I pulled it out of my plastic bag, which had some ridiculous talking bunny on it. Some kids show, maybe. Lambo made grabby hands, and I held the bag of sugar close for a moment before whipping it away. As Lambo's eyes welled up with (crocodile) tears I frowned at him. "But first, I'll have to tell you about something."

I walked out of the amusement park as I kept lecturing. "What do you do when you want someone to get something for you?"

Lambo scrunched up his face. "Gimme!"

"Wrong answer." I shook my head slowly, and dangled it out of reach. "What do you say?" I asked while not raising my voice (because that would just be counter-productive).

"It's Lambo-san's!"

"No, try again."

This continued for the whole walk back to Namimori main, and all the others watched bemusedly as Lambo fumbled his way through societal rules… all for a bag of fairy floss. Though it was hard earned, I think he enjoyed the sugar more by the way he finally got ate it (after what, fifty tries to get him to say, "Alice-nee, please give me the cotton candy?")

I eyed him critically even as I piggybacked him (was he getting fairy floss in my hair?). Looking backwards, the others were chatting amongst themselves. Tsuna was arguing with Reborn (who resorted to a kick to the head, in the end), Colonello and Fon were discussing something, and Yamamoto and Gokudera were arguing. I-pin was in Yuni's arms, and they were laughing.

Lambo murmured a burbled 'sleepy' and I shrugged and tried to make him more comfortable, even if he was getting a bit heavy.

Cute kid, he was.

When he was asleep, I mean.

* * *

After successfully escaping Lambo's trial, I accordingly planned to escape all the other ones (even if my acceptance of the plot going a little wrong was fine didn't mean I was going to risk it all, damn it).

I frowned. Oh yes, Chrome's one was annoying. I remember, all the girls got stuck in this bubble thing, and it was sealed so that oxygen couldn't circulate and blah-di-blah. Gokudera's one was okay, as it meant G proving he was better than Gokudera. Didn't involve me. Ryohei, school, Hibari. They passed together, strangely enough.

Hmm… I tapped my pen against the desk as I sorted through all the homework that I had missed. It was horrible. Japanese schools give too much homework to their students. I had the mind to sue them or something, tell them I didn't need so many assignments. Educate them on healthy working environments or something.

…I sighed, leaning back to look at the night sky. If I took out the factor of homework...

There was nothing to do.

It's a strange thing, to say you have nothing to do when there were trials going on for people to pass so that we could go back to the future and battle out Byakuran, the current evilest evil guy. Not adding to the fact that I had already died and come back to life in this weird not-quite-living body to guard a once fictional character who has a stripping problem and fights bad guys on a monthly basis.

And I was complaining on having _nothing to do_.

Stretching (and wincing – ow, I pulled my wound there. It was scabbing quite nicely though) I padded out of my room and into the kitchen. Grey had already fallen asleep, which was rare of him but completely understandable. No one could be superman for too long after all.

I quietly slipped out and into the elevator, stepping out at ground floor and smiling at the little yellow lights kept on for late visitors. I eyed the night outside doubtfully, the glass showing _just_ how dark it was but… no matter.

I walked outside, producing a little ball of grey flame that I curled my hands around for warmth and hoping the other people who saw the light just thought it was a neat invention. The gatekeeper yawned at me, before waving me through

"_Why so late, little miss?"_

"_I just wanted a late night walk, that's all."_

And down towards Namimori CBD I went. Nothing fancy really. I didn't even bother poking up my hair with chopsticks (though they were in my pocket), so it was blowing around _everywhere_ and I was brushing my hair out my eyes constantly. With a very irritated frown on my face.

I shivered.

Actually, what made me go out and walk around like this anyway? I didn't want to get a reputation for 'roaming the streets' thank you very much. The school already appreciated my fake yankee status a little too much. Wouldn't want to _prove_ them now, hey? I scanned the street for some 24/7 shops, but they were all closed. My shoulders slumped.

I guess my mind was so full but my body couldn't anything so it started wanting to walk around?

I sighed, turning around. Yamamoto once told me that I over thought stuff, and I dwelled on things _waaaay_ too much. Although I disagreed, I think I do now. If even I, the person doing the dwelling, noticed I was doing it then it must be pretty serious right? But...

The guy in the photo. _Who was the guy in the photo?_

Anise didn't say anything at all to me (not even a phone call, or an email, or a strange program that would force me to rehash my computer hacking skills to get to. No, nothing, which was highly suspicious) and Liza who answered my calls would be like

"Alice! You know, I was just thinking about you when _blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…"_

And she would go on and on without letting me in on a word at all. Which I think she did on purpose.

Highly suspicious movements must mean something really big, if they were hiding it from me. If they hid it from me, that meant that if I knew, it might change my plot, or the world, or something like that. Or they guessed it _would_ ruin my plot even if they didn't actually know the exact details of my plot.

Something big. Something related to Shimon. Big and Shimony.

I growled, and bashed my head against the wall of a shop.

Concentrate, I yelled at myself, frowning so hard my eyebrows were twitching. Concentrate! It could easily be a dire situation!

What could it be?

I came up with nothing. Nothing at all. Daemon had been pretty big, but he hadn't been anything much. And he was right here in spirit, after all. He couldn't be doing evil things now (although possessing Katou Julie would be a bad thing, Tsuna sorts that out later, right?)

So what was it?

Grumbling to myself, I plonked myself on the stone step of some random cake shop and touched my forehead with the flame to soothe it and making me look like a hunchback. Awesome. Closing my eyes, I tried concentrating again.

What was it, I asked myself. There must be a correlation. It could be something big enough to change the future. Pun not intended.

Footsteps rang out. A slightly stiff voice came from directly above me.

"People should not loiter on doorsteps."

I paled.

Gah. Why was Hibari here?

I smiled stiffly upwards. "Er, hi Hibari. How are you?"

He stared stonily down. "Namimori doesn't need any people walking around past midnight, as its bad for its reputation."

"So you do it instead," I dead-panned before stopping myself.

"Hn," Hibari just murmured instead, as he stood next to me and waited for me to get up. Strangely enough, he wasn't bashing my lights out. I frowned uncertainly.

"You're not going to randomly bash me up?"

Hibari didn't even bother looking down when he addressed me. "Have you done anything else, other than loitering on the streets, that requires discipline?"

"No," I said slowly. "I just wanted to think. Sorry, Hibari."

"If you don't get up off that doorstep by the count of one, I will bite you…"

He didn't even get to finish the sentence. I hurriedly got up, bowing a short bow towards him and running off, hightailing out of there before he changed his mind and became all killer mood on me. Although that did break my thought pattern (which had been quickly spiralling down towards panic) so I sent a mental thank you backwards as well.

Blanking out my face, I just flopped onto a foyer sofa, and since no-one other than a sleepy receptionist was there, I stared at the tiny yellow lights that looked so far away.

What was wrong with me?

I frowned. Maybe I should take Ryohei's advice and take up boxing.

…

Even contemplating about accepting _that_ offer shows how out of it I was.

I nodded to myself. I think I needed sleep.

Yeah, sleep.

* * *

Yuni looked up in concern when I trudged into Tsuna's room. "Alice-san, what happened?"

I shot a blood-shot, half-hearted crazed glare at her.

"M-tired…"

"Did you get enough sleep, Alice?" Tsuna asked worriedly, getting up and hovering. Wasn't it obvious? I pushed him away to collapse on his bed. Ah, a bed…

"I got to sleep at six…"

"It's seven right now!" Tsuna exclaimed while looking at his watch.

"My point exactly," I mumbled into the bed sheets. "It's horrible to only get thirty minutes of sleep," I continued to talk to my lovely new green friend (the blanket), who was soft and warm and nice to look at. So attractive! "I don't get how people pull all-nighters and not die…"

"Are you okay, Alice-nee?" I-pin worriedly asked as she shook my shoulder.

"Just need sleep."

I-pin frowned at me, before shooting some garlic smell up my nose and flinging me bodily up into the air. My eyes snapped open. "What?" I asked, disorientated. Why was the window upside-down?

Ah, because I was falling. That's it.

I landed with my face on the pillow, and I hugged it even while someone tugged a blanket over me (I saw a tuft of brown hair). I hope Tsuna didn't mind that I was hijacking his bed. Japanese people were overly conscious, weren't they? I hope he wasn't offended or anything…

"I wonder what made Alice so tired," I heard Tuna distantly say, worried over something. Me?

"I hope it isn't anything serious. Maybe it's her family," Yuni said sympathetically.

"I wish I knew, so I could help," Tsuna whispered as my breathing evened out and sleep started taking me. Oh no you don't, Tsuna, I mentally chided even as their voices faded completely. This was something I wanted to agonise over myself. If you got involved, it would drag me and everyone else down as well. This should well stay an _imaginary_ threat.

Damn it. Why was real life so complicated?

* * *

"Soon isn't fast enough!" I stirred at the sound of Gokudera's voice as I blearily opened an eye. Gokudera was picking a fight… with the ceiling?

Right. I closed my eyes again as I tried to ignore the really strange scene in front of me. I told myself not to be surprised anymore, right? (Impossible, a cynical part of my mind said).

After Fon thanked Tsuna for his tea, Yamamoto paused. "I guess each element still has different types of people," he observed.

"Come to think of it," Tsuna said, actually sounded surprised. I tried to stifle a laugh.

"There may not be much correlation between your elements and personality. That should be clear when you look at Skull." Reborn added.

"That's right… you would expect him to be a cloud, like Hibari-san."

"That's not entirely true, Tsuna."

He stiffened, and jumped even as he looked around. "Hiie! Alice, you were awake?"

I just got up and sat cross-legged on the bed. "Thank you for the bed, but I just wanted to correct something."

"Hm?" Reborn looked at me interestedly.

"Well, it shows that people with the same flame do have some characteristics in common. Like Reborn and Shouichi for example."

Tsuna scrunched up his face in thought. "But Shouichi-san and Reborn don't have anything in common!"

I grinned. "That's where you're wrong, Tsuna. Didn't Shouichi once tell us that he burnt all his textbooks just to become a musician in the future?"

Tsuna nodded slowly. "So?"

"He's extreme right? Like how Ryohei is with his boxing, Lussuria with his flamboyancy and Reborn with his tutoring."

"Oh!" He hit his fist with his palm. "I think I get it!"

"Then what about storm, Alice?" Yamamoto asked curiously.

"They're intelligent." I nodded at Gokudera and Fon. "Belphegor is renown as a genius, Belphegor's brother was pretty smart, Gokudera is smart, Fon is methodical and all."

At a raised eyebrow query from Reborn, I continued listing. "Clouds don't really fit in with the group, Mists have the ability to value something above all else, and although Hibari falls into that category too Mukuro actually has enough charisma to get along with people so that specification is quite logical so stop looking at me like that Reborn, Rains are the 'perfect assassins' (Yamamoto raised an eyebrow at that), Lightning users are eccentrics… and if you include Star into that, well, we're sticky beaks."

Fon smiled and nodded, sipping his tea.

"What you say rings true, Brighteye-san."

I smiled. "It was a conclusion I made myself after observing you lot. So I guess if I wasn't a Star Flame I would be… a Mist user."

I paused.

"Actually, that's kind of strange." I mused over Mukuro and I, of all people, being buddies. He creeped me out. I think sometimes I disconcerted him too (I got reminded of his face when I dropped a cucumber on his head) and we just didn't get along. But I did differentiate stuff I liked and stuff I didn't like, and sadly enough, right now I would do anything to keep Tsuna safe so I could go to Heaven.

The realisation unsettled me.

Often, the thing that we think we do, and what we would actually do in a situation is very different. I frowned, my momentary cheer gone, and I wiped my face blank.

"Alice?" Tsuna queried, the source of all my headaches for the past three years. But annoyingly unhateable, if you get what I mean.

Ha. I've known him for three years!

"Tsuna?" I asked back.

"Are you okay?" (even though his face was straining to ask, what about me? What's special about sky flames?)

"Yes, I'm fine. Just," I faked a yawn, "sleepy, that's all. I'm going to get some more sleep. Sorry, Tsuna," I said as I laid back down. "I'm hijacking your bed."

"It's okay, Alice."

I must have been more tired than I thought, because I fell asleep immediately.

And dreamt. Not of the weird grey room, this time, but of a different place. A place I knew before, but so nostalgic and so strangely alien and familiar at the same time… So nostalgic, and sad, and _safe _as I listened to familiar humming, the kettle shrieking, someone jumping down the stairs at an achingly familiar call for breakfast_._

_Why… am I in my room?_

* * *

**And what room is that, Alice? XD **

**This chapter kind of had to tear out of me, because Lambo's thing just didn't really EXCITE ME but I just couldn't let you readers wait for a whole month without an update now, can I? This was really… filler-ish. I'M SORRY! *sorry sorry sorry***

**But if you all want to know why it's so late… it's because of a maths test. Yes, a maths test that I prepared for and I think I failed because I panicked in the middle and OHMYGOSH I think my parents would be really disappointed in me but why am I ranting?**

**Anyway, I was surprised at how many people didn't get the very important point in the last chapter! Alice going out of the inn was very important you know – she just said, without really thinking, she belonged to the Vongola! Now, if that isn't some serious subconscious acceptance, then something else must've happened. Ohohoho…**

**But did people notice the picture? It's a small version of the newest fanart for MHJ! It's on my profile, so take a look at the big version if you like. Fanarts always accepted!**

**I had fun. I should write an extra, just so people can have some fanservice and because I have some very very serious apologising to do… (but three weeks isn't that long right? Right?)**

* * *

_To die alone is one of the greatest fears that many have._

"_I'm fine, Tsuna!" Alice huffed on the hospital bed, trying to cross her arms and failing because of a splint._

_Tsuna looked disbelievingly at her._

_Half her hair had to be chopped off to let the doctors stitch it up (she looked even more like a delinquent now, and he just knew she was going to complain), a broken arm, two cracked ribs, a nearly punctured lung, a leg broken… in two places, and the head injury! Didn't she know how scary it was when her head was bleeding non-stop and he was afraid her brains would spill out and oh…_

_It wouldn't, shouldn't have been that bad. She had been crossing the road with Kyoko and the others. He was tagging behind, wondering what he could say to Kyoko (they had been making some progress… after Alice had given him her remarkably effective evil eye) and Hibari and Yamamoto were walking behind him. Gokudera had been tagging along next to him._

_Then this crazy driver screeched around a corner, and headed straight for Alice and Kyoko who were _walking right in front of him_. Tsuna had watched, even as he yelled and started running forward as Kyoko got pushed forward by Alice and she jumped up, wincing as her leg gave a very audible crack._

"_Alice-chan!" Kyoko screamed, her hands to her mouth as Alice tried to get her leg out of the windscreen of the car (later, she had told Tsuna that she felt stupid for jumping up, even if it made sense at the time)._

"_I'm fine. Just… leg broken. Badly. Ow."_

_A blur passed Tsuna as Hibari glared at the driver, taking out a notebook from a pocket and bending to note the car plate. Everything was settling down, (it was going to be alright, he heard Yamamoto say to Alice), and Yamamoto was helping Alice get her leg out of the window when he eyes widened. It was Gokudera who gave the shout, who tugged him backwards to safety even as he struggled to go forward and rescue his guardians and Kyoko and_ Alice _who was stuck and injured and needed help_

_Yamamoto reacted, instinctively just expecting Alice to survive to rescue Kyoko (it had always been that way, to save Kyoko and Haru first) while Hibari tried to haul Alice out of the first car wreck. It was the first time Tsuna had seen him so serious. A truck was careening forward, the driver behind the wheel obviously scared. Something was wrong. It was speeding, dangerously so, and it was so _large…

_Two people were yelling at Hibari at once, even as Tsuna finally got out of Gokudera's hands, and they both ran forward (Gokudera later apologised, and said it was instinct. He said is so sincerely he just had to believe him)._

"_Get out of here," Alice yelled at Hibari even as she was obviously staring at the truck in horror (and grim acceptance, and Tsuna never wanted to see that face ever again). "It's not like you to have a hero complex, Hibari!"_

"_Boy, get out of there, get OUT OF THERE I CAN'T STOP!" the truck driver yelled, his face pale in fear and what this would mean for him and the two teenagers in front of him._

_Hibari cursed, before lighting up his tonfa and facing the truck head on, even as Alice tried to tug her broken leg out of the windscreen. No-one could have expected this, one car crash after another. It wasn't heard of (he told Yamamoto it just wasn't fair, and he had accepted him like normal, the calm of stability washing away his fear)._

_The truck didn't even try turn (later on, they found out the brakes had a malfunction) and Hibari ran forward and clashed with it in a storm of creaking metal and rumbling engines. Hibari skidded, already slowing down the truck so much but it was still too great and it was Alice who did the next unthinkable thing on that horrible, horrible day._

_In the split second that Hibari was straining against the truck, when he was in reach of Alice and the car (he told himself not to let it reach her, not to, never let it touch her but he didn't expect her to intervene, which was part of why he found her tolerable and infuriating, that independence), when the truck was still moving at least enough to kill a person, Alice had taken off her chopsticks and waited for Hibari to reach her. Then she pushed him to one side._

_She pushed her last surviving hope to one side._

_(when asked why, she just smiled and thought it was fate, and muttered to herself something about sixteen and death and Tsuna thought his heart was going to break because he wasn't ever going to let her nearly die like that again, never)_

_The truck crashed, the truck driver screamed, Kyoko screamed herself raw, clawing at Yamamoto's shocked arms as she finally slipped out and ran towards one of her dearest friends (Alice had a strange way of growing on people, but she was also one of her precious friends that had stuck with her through so much) Tsuna yelled as he burst into Dying Will (too late, too late his intuition said and for once he told it to shut up) and pushed the truck away._

_Ryohei had been immediately called, and he came rushing from the boxing club right away (he gave a shaky smile afterwards, saying Alice was an extreme recruit right?) and covered her with Sun flames, holding her on. Gokudera was staring, looking steady but if one looked at his hands in his pockets they were shaking._

_No one had nearly died before; no one in the family had really truly had over ninety percent chance of dying _alone_ before. It was all or nothing in the family. Fight together, or no danger at all._

_Dying alone._

_The ambulance came, and everyone rushed to the hospital just to fall into the most silent of moods at the hospital waiting room, where there was muffled shouts and horrible, horrible beeping. If only, Tsuna thought, if only I had reacted faster, if only Gokudera hadn't held me back, if I had got the nerve to walk with Kyoko, if only…_

_(If only he had reacted fast enough, cut the truck down maybe, because he knew he could do it even with Kyoko in his hands, maybe if he didn't pull the tenth back and shot the truck to bits before it hit, if only he was stronger, then I could have stopped the truck and stopped all this, if only I was strong, Kyoko cried, if only I could fight I wouldn't have to be rescued, and if only I was extremely there, I would have made a difference)_

_The doctor came out with a grim face._

_It was the worst day in their lives, for they were family that had fought through blood and wars and their fate together and it just wouldn't be right if one was just torn away so prematurely, so early_

_To die alone._


	46. Happiness

**Yo! It's technically monday, but let's just call it sunday because I'm only thirty-four minutes from 12:00. XD**

**I hope you enjoy! It's a bit random, this one, but I'm nearly back to the future! Finally! This dragged for awhile. Damn it. But yet, I wanted to do something. *cough* Looking forward to writing the next chapter, yohohoho**

* * *

_Kusakabe was trying to persuade himself that Kyo-san had not become a stalker._

_He sighed. And looked at the white floppy hat that Hibari had brought back from… wherever he had came back from._

_A girl's hat. _

_A girl's floppy, white, sunhat of all things. Kusakabe shook his head, picking up the hat and giving it a very scrutinising look and wondering who it was for. It couldn't be…_

_The grass in between his mouth nearly dropped in horror as he had a lightning moment._

It couldn't be… that rumour about Hibari-san dating was… was… TRUUEEE?

_Well… it was true that Kyo-san was handsome. And smart. And strong… in a psychopath way. And, he coughed, he was very devoted to… Namimori and dependable. When it came to things he liked._

_But none of these reached Kusakabe's brain first. His first reaction was_

That poor, poor girl…

_But then, Hibari did go into a frenzy when he heard the rumours and bashed them all out. It couldn't be shyness could it?_

_(Kusakabe choked at the image of Hibari, goodness sakes, ever being _shy_. His brain was burning)_

_Kusakabe coughed again, before frowning and returning to more serious tasks at hand. Work was the best thing to get rid of mental images after all._

_He had noted Hibari coming back after his extended school absence (which was highly unusual already) to practically haunt the school (after all, he did usually go back to his house – now he just stayed in the Disciplinary Room all. The. Time. Which wasn't a bad thing, but…)_

_Then he started searching up all the stuff about one of the students Kusakabe knew he was already interested in._

_Alice Bright._

_Or, Alice Brighteye. _

_It didn't take long to realise the info on Alice Bright's page was fake. Not only did her records not match reality – Kyo-san's network was quite formidable – they searched where she lived. There were no records of a person with Alice Bright living in Namimori._

_There, however, was an Alice Bright_eye_._

_Because anyone who fakes records for Namimori-chu is worth biting to death, Hibari chased her down, and she successfully escaped (remarkable already), for most of the first half of the year all the while with the Disciplinary Committee trying to find out her origins._

_However, they yet again found nothing._

_Her real info page was as blank as Hibari-san's. This was borderline miraculous._

_Hibari stopped chasing her around when the brown-haired – Sawada was it? – well Sawada-san started having friends, connecting with the most popular people in the school. Which is suspicious. Very suspicious. And if even he, Kusakabe, felt suspicious, the Hibari would feel an outright conspiracy because well… Kyo-san was a bit on the paranoid side (it didn't help that she knew a lot of things she wasn't supposed to know. Like where the boss of those people who beat up the Disciplinary Club was when even Kyo-san didn't know)_

_So those 'random' appearances between the two that Kusakabe was sure even Bright-san noticed was making him excessively worried. It wasn't normal. _

_Kusakabe pulled on his hair, chewing a new piece of grass and stared at Kyo-san._

_He sighed._

_Whatever. Supporting Kyo-san was his job after all. Who else would remind him to have breakfast?_

* * *

My room. Yup, that crack was still there from the time Jack threw a pair of scissors at the ceiling. Those light orange walls that were fading because of excessive sunshine, the curtains which had mermaids on them because I wanted to annoy Jack…

Wait. Those curtains weren't there. Huh?

Actually, my bed wasn't here either. I was lying on the carpet.

Huh.

Err, so, where am I?

As I lay dazedly on the floor (the bookshelf was still filled with my books though, strangely enough), this nineteen year old barged into the room, throwing his jacket on the floor very reminiscent of my little brother, flopped on the bed before shooting back up to take off his glasses, then sighed before flopping on the bed again.

Hmm. I stood up, before walking over to him.

"Jack?"

He looked right through me. I noticed something.

I grouched. Why was he tall? Did he get the genes from Dad or something? I just had to get Mom's genes, who was short. Which wasn't bad, but still, the dream to become tall! Though he was still as pretty as ever, as he got the black hair and blue eyes from the family. As usual, colour wise, he was mom. Monochrome wise, I was dad.

…I don't think he would appreciate being called pretty. I should take advantage of my intangibility.

"You're really pretty," I stated to his face. He kept staring straight through me. I nodded. "Yup, you are. How are you, anyway?"

Silence. A sigh.

"Breakfast, Jack!" My mom called from downstairs… in English.

I was moved. English! Oh how I have missed you! In Japan, their English language lessons were so dead, they didn't give any beauty to it at all.

"Coming mom," he grumbled as he levered himself up.

Oh. My. God. Where was his squeaky voice? Who was this rumbly voice?

Ah, I shook my head as I looked out the window. My little brother had hit puberty! If time flew by at the same rate as Katekyo then… I counted.

Arrived when I was 'eight'. I was fifteen. Fifteen, seven years. Twelve plus seven was twenty, but his birthday was later in the year so… nineteen. So he was nineteen after all. Which means I should be twenty-three. Technically.

I blinked. Wow. I was legal? Really, that was just a really strange notion. I mean, sixteen, then eight, then fifteen.

That's kind of sad. I would never really be over sixteen, would I? Then I chuckled. It fits with the ghost theory though, how people just keep on being the same age, never growing older than their death. Those ghost stories did have an iota of truth in them after all. It made me laugh as I followed Jack down to the kitchen.

Other than a new television, some more computers and a girl I didn't recognise at the table, there really wasn't any change. Mom had a new set of knives though, that looked really sharp. Really, really sharp.

"Hamburger," mom said shortly to them both, as she went back to chopping onions. Jack visibly tried to blink tears away (he had always been extra-sensitive to onions).

"Nice." He sat down.

"Jack, did you know I made a new friend today? His name is Kevin!" The girl said happily, talking with a full mouth. I frowned.

Jack's eyes visibly narrowed. "Oh, so your new friend is a _guy_ huh," he growled in his new rumbly voice. Emily, for that was who she must be, since three plus seven is ten and she looked around ten-ish, grinned.

"Not again! They're really nice people, bro!"

"Hmph," Jack stuffed his mouth.

I took the time when they were kind of silent to look around the room. They were sitting in the kitchen, but there was only a bench between that and the living room. It was as bare as usual, except for a few photo frames. The Pilates mat in the corner looked a bit dusty, the couch was a bit more worn than I last saw it, as expected. The television was huge and widescreen and very futuristic. I wondered what other innovations were there, since my mom was talking into this very strange earpiece thing that… was that a touch screen in the kitchen?

Woah. Time had obviously passed, huh. I… could have had a job now.

My heart suddenly seemed so heavy.

As I looked around the house that was so familiar yet so strangely alien (and so normal, as I haven't seen a truly worn carpet in years). Did Bill pull me here as some form of round-about torture?

"And you know, my teacher told me I had the best marks in science. Didn't you tell me that sister did that too?" Emily chattered on. Jack laughed, swallowing.

"Yup. She was annoyingly good at science. I hate it. Who cares about science anyway? It's like math. Totally useless."

"No it's not!"

I stopped staring at my mom, resisting the urge to glomp her crying to laugh my younger siblings' banter even while drifting to the counter to look at three photo frames, curious to know who they were. We were never a family to hang photos everywhere. The counter, when I had… died, there was only one frame. That was my mother's sister, my aunt, who had died from some strange disease.

I leaned down. My sister's chatter was comforting as I looked at the familiar picture of my aunt and uncle before she went to hospital and my uncle moved to Canada in grief. The next picture was of... me. I was there, smiling this time, grinning even while I pushed Jack's head down. Mom was smiling serenely with dad behind us, holding a one-year old Emily. Grandma was the one taking the photo, and we were at the Botanical Gardens that time. There was a fountain, and Jack had splashed me with that disgustingly unhygienic water, so I was enacting revenge by calling him midget and pushing him.

Which he had been of course. A midget.

The third one was Grandma in her bed hugging an eight year old Emily and a younger looking Jack. Around sixteen maybe.

Oh. If grandma was on this counter, that meant…

There was no grandma behind me today.

I gave a half-hearted grin. I wonder what Trial she got? Maybe she would finish before me and wait for in Heaven or something. And then we could both watch Jack and Emily and make fun of them while I threw popcorn at her like the old days.

"I'll have a chat with Kevin later," Jack promised. I smirked. Overprotective older brother much? That was so cute!

"Well Emily, you'll be late for school if you don't leave now." Mom called over her shoulder, and I quirked an eyebrow at her tone. She sounded so tired.

Emily nodded and grinned. "Okay!" She ran up the stairs, and Jack finished his last mouthful of burger. This also made me quirk my eyebrow. What were they doing, eating hamburger for breakfast? Weirdoes.

"Where does she get that energy from?" My mother asked nobody in particular with a fond smile.

Emily thundered past again, calling a goodbye as she ran out of the house unescorted. I knew the primary school was close to our house, so I guess it was no biggie. Jack and I had both went there after all.

Jack seemed to be lazing around at home after breakfast (he had that look to him – whenever he ate breakfast without his glasses, you knew he would laze around that day. That habit had not changed) so I drifted after Emily. I didn't really want to stick around the house. It brought up memories.

She ran around the corner, and I found myself needing to jog a bit to catch up.

I watched Emily greet her friends and go through class (she had the same home room teacher as me, surprisingly. Mrs Tucker was still teaching?). Halfway through the day, I drifted back to the house and bugged my brother for a bit (otherwise known as talking to him about his only bad physical feature - which was the pimple on his neck) and wandering around wondering where Amanda was.

I later found her at around one o'clock in the afternoon. I nearly didn't recognise her as she walked out of the library. She walked right through me, and I followed back to her house/mansion to her room. Chuckling at how she grumbled at her uni exams, I was touched to find quite a few photos of me and her still in her room. Even after seven years… she was holding up well. A little worry eased.

I smiled, gave her an intangible hug, and drifted towards the school again. Just in time, Emily was waving her friends goodbye, and I settled to walk beside her.

Wondering why no-one was picking her up, I silently watched as Emily hummed and skipped forward. It was only a five-minute walk back home anyway.

She carefully looked both ways before crossing the road only to trip on one of her shoelaces. Trying to catch her instinctively (Tsuna did it all the time after all) I sighed as she just fell through my arms, shaking my head with a smile. I crouched down in front of her, as she stumbled up and looked in dismay at her skinned knee. The only sound was an engine roaring in the distance.

I didn't really know what happened next.

Maybe it was because it was cloudy, and it was cloudy on _that _day too. Maybe it was all the training I had gotten in Katekyo. Maybe it was just that I knew I must have appeared back here for a purpose. Maybe it was just the similarity of the situation, that my body had already experienced it before.

I didn't really believe in coincidences anymore really. Because I knew the car was there even before it turned the corner.

I stared at Emily, who was still in the process of looking up, the tiny corner of her brain that registered what was happening not yet communicating to her body.

I set my mouth into a grim line.

_This was not the time to be intangible._

My hand went through Emily's collar, as I tried to pull her backwards. This was just like a bad dream, a nightmare, because I didn't want my family to go through that again, my sister was too _young_ to feel all those things I had experienced and she had a _life_ damn it all!

This was not the time to be intangible. I stared at my hand.

_You _will_ become solid._

I reached out my hand to grab onto Emily's collar, and dragged her backwards even as the car passed her whooshed past, the driver slowing down before realising he hadn't hit anything to keep on driving.

My little sister was breathing hard, only standing because my hand still holding the back of the collar of her dress. Then she blinked, before shivering and scrambling to get her balance again. She turned around, probably ready to give a big thank you before stopping as she stared at me.

"You… sister?"

I blinked and pointed at myself even while I was trying to still my own beating heart trying to get over the fact that _my sister had nearly just died_. Do ghosts even have hearts?

"You can see me?" Emily slowly nodded, staring, about to say something but I knelt down first. I stared at her, unblinkingly and not knowing what to say. So I hugged her. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there as you grew up."

"N-no, thank you…"

I laughed. "Isn't it the job of a Guardian Angel?" My mind scrambled for something else to say, before I faded again and I knew, for some reason, this was a one time miracle. "Good job on that science test. Did you know Mrs Tucker marks the hardest? Oh, and can you tell Jack to stop talking with his mouth full?"

Emily gave a little choking laugh, even as I heard footsteps behind me.

"This is strange. I'm being hugged by my dead sister…"

"Emily, Emily! Are you okay? I saw what happened at the end of the street. Who's that hugging you? I have to thank them!" Jack's new voice shouted behind me. I slowly let go of Emily to turn around, already knowing I was already nearly finished fading away.

"I'm really happy." I said to him, and his eyes widened before starting to practically sprint towards me.

"Don't you dare fade away, damn it!" He shouted as he ran. I just stood there, not really knowing the rate that I was fading away at in their eyes. But his eyes lost hope around ten steps away, and when he did reach us he pulled Emily into a tight hug. After a while, he asked a question.

"Do you think we're both hallucinating?" He asked her, mumbling into her hair.

"But someone did pull me backwards, Jack. She…she told me to tell you to stop talking with your mouth full."

Jack laughed. "Really? How does she know? Wait, she did told me she would haunt me."

"Really?" Emily asked, interested.

"Yup. And she would drink hot chocolate while waiting for us to go up and everything." Jack let go of Emily to stand up and carefully cross the road this time. I drifted behind them.

"Do you think she's with grandma?"

"Probably. Maybe she's sick of drinking hot chocolate already so she's giving it to grandma to give to grandpa because she doesn't like sweet drinks."

"Haha, that's funny! There was something strange though."

"Hmm?" Jack looked down at Emily, who was readjusting her backpack.

"She was talking with a small accent. Like those Japanese ones."

It was Jack laughing this time. "Maybe she went on a free trip to Japan as a holiday or something. She's a ghost, so it doesn't cost her anything!"

Emily giggled. "I kind of understand why mom and you and dad all miss her so much now. She's an awesome guardian angel."

"…Yeah, she is."

"She was crying though."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Really?

I touched my face.

So I was.

But yet I was also smiling.

* * *

"Miss? Are you finally waking up?" I opened my eyes to see Grey, his face concerned. "You wouldn't wake up, and you started crying and laughing in your sleep, so I thought there was something wrong. Are you alright?"

"What time is it, Grey?"

"Eight at night."

"Oh, I missed Gokudera's trial too…" I wiped my eyes, and smiled at Grey. "Can you cook me something?"

"Of course, Miss. What do you want?"

I looked at the little yellow lamp on my bedside, flickering light onto the rich dark red curtains.

"Give me a cup of hot chocolate?"

* * *

The next day I went to school, giving Gokudera a pat on the back as I passed his seat in the front row. He gave me an irritated scowl, and I shrugged and shot my blank face at him at full power.

"Good job," I informed him.

"Whatever, freaky eyes," he said even as his scowl turned into a slightly proud smirk. "How do you know anyway?"

"Just because I was truanting doesn't mean I wasn't there. Improve and maybe you'll be like G one day," I added offhandedly, and his eyes narrowed.

"Juudaime officially declared me his right-hand man yesterday, you know."

I bobbed my head brainlessly, just the way I knew that made him annoyed.

"Of course, of course."

Gokudera grew even more annoyed, as predicted. "What are you implying, Brighteye?" He growled, whipping out his dynamite.

"Well, I'm saying you did really well."

"Hmm, that's not what I'm hearing." We faced off, the other students backing off (and some attempting to go to my side – identified fanboy alert – and some girls went to Gokudera's side – fangirls, all of them)

"What are you hearing then?" I asked genially, even as I started pulling the chopsticks out of my hair.

"You're saying that –"

"Now, now, calm down you guys!" Yamamoto laughed as he placed a hand on both our shoulders. "Arguing isn't a good thing!"

"I was just praising Gokudera on how his Trial went."

"Gokudera, you passed?" Yamamoto gave him a surprised look, before grinning and slapping his shoulder. "That's really good! I was just about to tell you Tsuna asked us all to go the roof at recess!"

Yamamoto stayed, chattering happily until Gokudera tucked his dynamite back into his jacket (the whole class sighed in relief), and he walked to his seat afterwards.

Well, I mused in my head. It isn't like me to deliberately antagonise Gokudera-_chan_ but it was so fun. I shrugged, before walking towards him.

"What, freaky eyes?" He grumped.

"I was serious," I said seriously. "Tsuna needs trustworthy friends by his side."

Gokudera gave a smirk and a 'keh'. "You don't think I knew that? Just go sit down already." Then he closed his eyes and put his feet on the table, and I gave a slight smile as I patted his shoulder again.

"Good job."

He was about to reply, before Tsuna stepped in and he flew out of his seat in a flurry of "Juudaime, good morning today!"

I shrugged, and went back to my seat to frown in annoyance at how _sunny _my seat was. But hey, at least it was warm.

* * *

"Hana, Alice, let's go," Kyoko said as she pulled us away from the window and Tsuna and co. Her cheeks were a bit red at the scene that Ryohei was presenting us outside the window – running with one of those roller things that flatten the field with Reborn on his head – and pulled us downstairs.

"Bye, Tsuna," I called, "Yamamoto and Gokudera."

They didn't get a chance to reply as I went downstairs with Kyoko and Hana.

"I feel sorry for you, Kyoko," Hana was sighing as she ran a hand through her hair. We walked out of the school into the street. "Having a brother like that must be really really hard. When I even imagine spending everyday with him, I think I'll go crazy."

Inwardly, I laughed.

"No," Kyoko was shaking her head, even as she beamed her happy pink sparkle grin. "He's a really gentle brother!"

Cue dead-pan look from Hana.

"Really?" She asked doubtfully. "And why's your cheek twitching, Alice? You look constipated."

I ignored the constipated part and kept trying to stop laughing. "Who knows, Hana" I added, mentally cracking up, "he might be your ideal guy and you'll date him in the future or something."

"What?" Hana screeched, her looking at me in horror. "He's way to 'extreme' for me, thank you very much. I prefer guys like that hunky guy I met in Tsuna's house."

Kyoko gave a confused grin. "Hunky guy?"

I shrugged again. "A grown up version of Lambo maybe."

"Lambo-chan?" Kyoko asked, blinking at me. "I did hear that the guy you like wears cow prints like Lambo..." She trailed off.

Hana shuddered. "Don't even say that. He gives me the hives." This time I didn't even try to keep in a short chuckle.

Then Kyoko clapped her hands. "But thinking of Hana as my sister is really nice!"

"Kyoko, not you too!" Hana groaned, as we reached the intersection between Kyoko and her house. Hooking her bag over her shoulder, she gave a wave. "Well, bye you two. See you tomorrow."

"See you, Hana," I said as I gave a slow wave. Kyoko exuberantly gave Hana a hug.

"I've missed you, Hana!"

Hana gave Kyoko an exasperated look as she gave her an one-armed hug back. "You've been saying that quite a lot these days. What's up?"

Kyoko smiled. "I say it because it's true, Hana! You'll always be my best friend!" She then laughed, before skipping backwards and waving. Hana blinked and smiled back.

"Bye."

We watched her for two seconds, before Kyoko turning to me. "I've arranged to meet Haru and Bianchi-san to check on Chrome again. Do you want to come?"

I thought a bit, before nodding.

"Why not? I haven't seen Haru for the past few days anyway."

Kyoko grinned, before hooking her arm with mine and dragging me to the crème puff shop so she could order a few boxes (and me watching in wonder as she inhaled four in one go while I struggled to even eat one without spilling the cream) when we heard Haru's distinctive 'Hahi!'. We both turned, me raising an eyebrow at how Bianchi was holding Haru up by an arm as she tried to regain her balance and apologise at the same time.

"Haru-chan!"

"Kyoko-chan!"

The ran and hugged each other, while I drifted next to Bianchi. "Yo, Bianchi. Why are you going with the girls?"

"Kokuyo isn't safe, obviously." She smiled, looking down at me. "I haven't seen you much lately. What have you been doing lately?"

"I visited my family in Italy," _nearly got smashed by the Varia death trap forest, _"came back and slept the whole day yesterday, _and apparently worrying Grey into hysterics, _"and well, normal stuff. Went to school today though."

"Your family? How are your parents?"

I blinked in confusion.

"Parents?"

"Yes, are they still happy? I hope your grandfather accepts them together."

My parents? Grandpa? Huh?

…

_My mary-sue story?_

"I never heard your mother's name though."

I laughed nervously.

"Err… they were happy!" I squeaked. Bianchi ranked high on people I was scared of – her poison cooking was lethal. "Yes, they were really happy! They… were going to concerts together and everything! My mom's name is Mary! Isn't it such a pretty name?"

"It is. Your family was English, wasn't it, for you name to be Alice."

I nodded quickly, very eager to please.

"Yeah." Bianchi quirked an eyebrow at me even as we followed the girls, dropping by at Kyoko's house to collect a bento and shrugging and moving on _thank goodness. _I couldn't even remember half of what I said to her.

I think there was something about an earthquake and models.

…

I frowned to myself. How the heck did that even relate to one another?

"How's school, Alice?"

"Fine I guess. It's a bit boring, and I think I'm getting burnt from the sun. I sit in the window seat, see," I said to her. She flicked her dark pink hair over her shoulder, amusement in her green eyes.

"Worried over tan lines, Alice?"

Tan lines? I struggled over that Japanese word for a moment before remembering it from this commercial somewhere.

"Not really…" I trailed off. "I just don't like being burnt."

"I'll give you some cream to try out when we get back," she promised me.

I looked up at her. "I'll like that."

"Stop having such a blank face, Alice!" Bianchi exclaimed as she pinched my cheeks.

I was seriously surprised at how pleasant and normal this conversation was going. When Bianchi wasn't around Reborn or Tsuna or near a kitchen she was really nice. Unfortunately, I sighed, it seemed like every time I bumped into her she was in the kitchen wanting me to try a new batch of cookies only Gokudera could survive, or cuddling Reborn, or 'tutoring' Tsuna.

The last one was funny to watch though.

I stopped at the entrance, narrowing my eyes at the place. "Ah, this place makes me remember some unpleasant stuff." Dark, dank cells with only a bird and a bloody prefect as company for a whole day and night. And meeting Mukuro. He was so creepy! "Can I wait here?"

"But you went all this way with us, Alice-san!" Haru protested, peering at me from the other side of Kyoko.

"I'll meet Chrome when you find her."

They looked at me strangely at that, but headed in, with Bianchi shooting me a concerned glance, and I just took out a gun and twirled it around a finger.

"Don't worry, I'll be fine. I guess I'll be a lookout."

I waited about twenty minutes before they came back out, bento still in hand and Haru and Kyoko looking worried while Bianchi looked contemplative.

"Chrome-chan isn't in there, Alice-chan!" Kyoko exclaimed, looking surprisingly upset. "She hasn't been back since the day we left!"

"We have to tell Tsuna-san right away!" Haru exclaimed, marching forward towards the bus stop that went back to Namimori. It was nearly sunset anyway, so we all hurried and got on a bus just in time.

Bianchi slid in next to me just as Kyoko and Haru sat in silence in front of us. Kyoko twisted the knot of the cloth that wrapped the boxes together around the whole trip.

I was silent, just as usual. There really wasn't much I wanted to contribute in this type of atmosphere. I was awkward even in normal conversations – what the heck could I say here?

When we got off the bus, Bianchi paused and put a hand on my shoulder. "I trust you, Alice."

I squinted up at here, raising an eyebrow. Huh? She waited until the other two girls were out of earshot (and talking to the ground… wait, that was Lambo and I-pin). "I know you know where Chrome is," she continued. "How do I know that, you ask?" She asked when she looked down at me. She paused again, before ruffling my hair and smiling gently. "You didn't expect to see Chrome even when you went to Kokuyo, did you?"

I looked at her before kind of cursing myself in my brain. Sometimes I forgot Bianchi was one of the deadliest assassins out there. She must be good at reading people.

"Everything will be fine in the end," I told her.

She smiled. "I don't know what you all were doing, going on that so-called picnic of yours but remember I'll always be here, alright?"

I shot her a look, surprised, before nodding even though I knew I would never take her up on her offer.

"I will," I lied, my blank face impenetrable.

She gave me a considering look, before shaking her head. "Go, catch up. They're waiting for you."

Indeed they were, Kyoko and Haru holding onto Lambo and I-pin while looking back at me and Bianchi. Haru was jiggling a bit impatiently, but Kyoko was calm and smiling, as if somehow _knowing_ what we were talking about and was content.

"Okay, bye Bianchi."

"Bye, Alice."

I jogged a bit to catch up with the others, and we all walked to Namimori-chu.

"Hahi, what is that?" Haru asked with her eyes wide at Skull's huge battleship/blimp thing.

"I don't know," Kyoko said, her eyebrows furrowed.

"The ship will crash and it will go boom boom!" Lambo exclaimed happily in Kyoko's arms, and I frowned at him.

"Lambo, don't predict stuff like that. It doesn't do anyone good."

"Mhmm, Lambo-chan!" Kyoko said even as she hugged him tighter and walked into the school. "We all don't want that!"

Haru walked with us, I-pin jumping out of her arms and running alongside her as they listened to Lambo's protesting whines.

We wandered around the school for a bit before reaching the school's side garden, where Gokudera had tried to kill Tsuna only so many months ago. "Haru thinks we should leave, we can't find Tsuna-san anywhere," she said to us even as Kyoko looked up and widened her eyes at a small figure floating above the rooftop.

"Is that," she pointed to dot spouting yellow flames, "Onii-chan!"

Ryohei glanced down in surprise and a bit of horror at Kyoko and us. "Kyoko! What are you doing here?"

Skull's grating voice came over the speakerphone… somewhere. "Attack! I won't ever let them get away with this!"

There was only another small dot I could see on the roof, and that was Hibari. Who I had wanted to avoid of course, after the rumours (that didn't spread as far as I thought they would – Hibari probably took care of it when I went to the Varia with Jared) and that weird Hibari encounter at night.

But that was another matter all together.

"Gragh!"

My attention was drawn back to Ryohei, who was punching three of the missiles that had aimed for him, while Kyoko tensed up in worry. Understandable worry. They were freaking big missiles after all. And Ryohei were facing them with only boxing gloves.

They exploded, the dust and the shrapnel and the _explosion_ so much bigger than I expected, the cracks of noise as they burst into flame making me cover my ears.

It hurt, damn it.

"Ah, Alice-chan!" Kyoko cried, even as Haru starting yelling a 'Hahi!' in horror or surprise, I won't know.

The fourth missile was heading for us. Ah, damn it, I sighed with my gun ready, shooting the missile with the two shots I had left in my gun. The other six I had used for practice in boredom as I waited for Kyoko and the others (dangerous, I know, but there was literally no-one! I swear!)

It didn't explode.

My eyes widened as the missile's metal coating was thick enough to just deflect the bullets to the side without making it detonate. But when I shot it had been the ideal distance – any closer, and it was certainly closer now, would mean excessive danger from shrapnel and heat.

But anything was better than the missile actually exploding on us.

I quickly twisted, reaching in my bag for more bullets, before wincing and clutching my stomach.

Ow. I shouldn't have twisted that fast. Running in that Varia forest wasn't good for my wound, after all… Why did humans have to have such a slow recovery rate?

Sometimes I wish I was Yamamoto. He healed friggin fast.

But why was I thinking about all this anyway, I thought as I stared blankly at the missile heading straight for us, distantly sighing in my head at how there was a bit of stickiness to the bandages. If I survive this, I'll have to change them again…

Everyone closed their eyes, waiting for the explosion before it did actually explode, only on a… purple wall in front of us?

Or cute hedgehog, I revised my opinion of the wall as it squeaked at me and the others, its eyes twinkling cheerfully as it blinked.

Oh yeah. This happened. Hibari and his stupid debts. I wonder if he thought of this as repaying my debt? Peering around Roll, I saw Hibari staring straight back at me, unblinkingly. I ducked back behind the wall.

Now that was scary. And creepy as hell. Where was Tsuna?

Looking around and not seeing Tsuna anywhere, I massaged my temples with a sigh.

"Too much excitement for the day," I stated blandly to Kyoko and Haru. "I'll leave the rest to you lot, okay? Remember to tell them about Chrome."

Then I dawdled slowly away, not really looking forward to pieces of blimp crashing on me, because from Ryohei's face he looked like he was about to do just that. I remembered something kind of like that too, where Ryohei just leapt forward, punched the blimp and it just fell into pieces.

The first time I watched it, I was just like nodding, yeah, as if that would happen.

(Because seriously, the Arcobaleno trials didn't happen, so I didn't expect this to happen. But it did, and I knew Ryohei well enough that his sun-flame powered punched could actually destroy that battered looking airship. Ridiculously super-powered shounen stamina freaks).

Yawning on the lift, I wondered belatedly which trial was next.

I blinked.

Oh damn, it was Daemon Spade, wasn't it?

Wasn't he that troublesome fellow that put all the girls (which I think I would be with) into this air-tight place where they were kept until the oxygen ran out?

Mammon had pointed out a crack in the illusion.

Hmm.

But wasn't he in the Varia mansion when I visited it? He hadn't been tutoring Chrome at all!

As the elevator dinged and I stepped out into my apartment, smiling at Grey and dinner (which looked delicious, by the way – carrots, peas, potato, fish, mussels, and jelly for dessert) I worried.

He better come. I didn't want to die from asphyxiation. I've heard it was painful.

I chomped through another bite of fish.

Why was it that I always had to _worry?_ First it was Mukuro, and wondering if I could get stronger – then there was Varia and the extra Guardian business, then Belle (who I had pushed into a happy box in my brain) and now this?

Well to be fair, I thought while chewing my fish and nodding at Grey's recount of the day, this was relatively minor in comparison to others. But still as life-threatening.

Gah.

Reality sucks.

* * *

_The next day_

"Well, some things only girls can understand after all," Reborn said with serious eyes at the scene before him. Chrome acting as if she was a soulless body, not responding to Kyoko, Haru, I-pin or even me. She usually jumped up at Kyoko and Haru, smiled at I-pin, and jumped up and bowed to me (which I suspect is because I was the first person related to Mukuro she ever saw). Her state was worrying. If I didn't know she would be fine...

"So we should leave them here?"

"Yes, leave us alone for awhile, Yamamoto-kun," Haru said, looking at Chrome in concern. "We'll catch up later."

After a series of comments and concerned questions, they started filing out. Gokudera looked back.

"Hey, Alice, we're going."

I frowned and immediately grew annoyed.

"I… am female, Gokudera."

...

Silence.

"Haha, I'm sure Gokudera didn't mean that, Alice!" Yamamoto laughed, trying to smooth us over.

"Nah, it's just that sometimes I forget she's a girl, that's all."

"Are you calling me manly?" I looked at Tsuna, who just gaped in his dead fish way that said –_my-family-is-still-crazy-even-in-THIS-situation? – _way. "Tsuna, am I manly?"

He burst into life as he twiddled with his gloves.

"Uhh… You don't look manly, Alice."

"Yeah," Gokudera muttered, "You act manly instead."

"Is that true?" I asked slowly, staring at Tsuna.

"N-no?" Tsuna squeaked.

"Guys!" Haru finally exploded. "Leave now! We want to talk to Chrome-chan, and females only!" She glanced at me. "That includes you, Alice-san. Now leave!" She pointed at the door at the males, and the slowly shuffled out, Yamamoto happily pushing a smirking Gokudera (maybe he was happy after finally getting under my nerves) while Tsuna gave one last wave at all of us before closing the door.

Now, I thought as I crossed over to sit next to Chrome, holding her limp hand even as I looked out the window. Not sunset yet. I only have to wait for the trap to set.

* * *

Poking the mist barrier with dead-pan eyes, I just sighed. As expected. It was perfectly solid and impenetrable to break by physical means. It curved as a perfect little dome around us, Just over Yuni's head, two and a bit metres in diameter and much smaller than I expected. No wonder they had run out of oxygen so fast.

"Hey Yuni, let's make sure Chrome is comfortable," I said even as the others around me started unconsciously sucking larger breaths to get enough oxygen. It wouldn't be long until Kyoko or Haru realised that it was air-tight. Yuni and I had already suspected this anyway.

"Alice," Yuni said, hesitant before glancing at Kyoko and Haru. Then she smiled a bit sadly before shaking her head. "Ah, nothing."

Must be something sensitive.

Haru noticed the little glance and immediately frowned.

"Yuni-chan! Don't stop talking to Alice about something! Remember we're all in this together, right? Haru already knows about the Mafia remember? Kyoko-chan does too!"

"No," Yuni shook her head yet again. "It's nothing like that. It's… something personal to Alice," she hesitated again, glancing at me. I returned her slightly sad look. Yuni was such a beautiful, gentle calm girl. She was just so very hard to not _like_. Why did she have to die?

From one that had gone through death, I knew it wouldn't be that scary. But as one who had gone through a life without knowing the other side of death, I knew how horrifying the prospect would be. One loses their family, their loved ones, their own individual sense of self. The fear that there was nothing after death, that what one had achieved was just nothing – that your personality and mind would just disappear after dying...

Yet she still had done it, after weeks of mulling it in her head.

I understood the sudden impulses. The ones where a person just jumps in front of another without really thinking – because the key words there are _without really thinking._

I didn't understand Yuni. Maybe because we were so different. I would fight and cling to life, very, _very_ selfishly. I would not sacrifice my life, if this was my first one, for another person. Cry for them maybe, try to help, but not sacrifice myself for the greater good

I would be too scared.

"I was just thinking that everyone had told you two everything," Yuni continued, gesturing to Kyoko and Haru, "but I don't think you've heard about how Alice is ten years into the future… have you two?"

"Hahi! Now that you mention it, Yuni-chan, we didn't hear a mention of ten-years later Alice-chan at all! There were jokes thrown here and there about Gokudera-kun, but nothing about Alice!"

I winced a bit.

"Yuni, they don't really need to know about it…"

Yuni looked firm. "No, they deserve to know."

I frowned in confusion at her. "Why?"

"Just say it as experience." She gave me that small smile again, that sad one that she wore whenever she even glanced at me.

Okay. Something was very fishy here.

Yuni wouldn't want Haru and Kyoko to go through emotional pain, so something about the future. Something about the future that made her want to change it enough and relating to my death.

Right. Drawing a blank here.

"Have you been keeping a secret from us, Alice-chan?" Kyoko asked with the slightest bit of hurt and betrayal.

You wouldn't even know, Kyoko.

I sighed, flopping down on the floor, even as Kyoko pressed a hand to her forehead, presumably fighting dizziness from oxygen deprivation. "Hahi, it's getting harder to breathe."

"Yeah it is," Kyoko said, a slight frown marring her face. It had been around twenty minutes - it was getting a bit humid in here.

"Let me," Yuni stepped up, frowning and clasping her hands in front of her until the little bag around her neck that held her orange pacifier started glowing. I-pin, Kyoko and Haru's breathing immediately eased, but I didn't exactly feel any change. But I had no problem breathing low-oxygenated air.

Was it another one of those things again, where I just don't die?

I sighed.

Kyoko looked expectantly at me.

I shrugged.

There was no harm, right?

* * *

**Well, that's that.**

**I'm tired.**

**THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR KIND REVIEWS!**

**I hope this wasn't boring, darn it.**

**Anyway.**

**night night! (=(oo)=) (eyebags)**


	47. Is a fleeting thing

**Yo! The RETURN OF THE FIGHTS! YAY! COOL! WONDERFUL! (because really, I kind of wanted to skip the Guardian trials as well but unfortunately, it would be plain superhuman even for Alice to even remotely recover from an injury that severe in such a short time so... XD)**

**But first, thanks for all the reviews! Have you seen the counts? O_O I was shocked. Yeah. And ff . net is showing favs and alerts too now! I wonder why - is there a point to it? _ Other than advertising of course.**

**Anyway, why am I ranting? I hope you enjoy - there's some character development from characters other than Alice here. Haha!**

* * *

_Sometimes I wondered, as I looked into the beautiful blue sky above us. If I laid down, grass tickling my cheeks and squishing a few flowers, to stare at how impossibly pure the colour of the sky was – just how near it was, just how far away it was, just how impossible its existence was – would I see my friends in its depths?_

_To soar into a shallow pond, dive up into that blue that became brighter and darker at the same time, would I reach something that let me go to the impossible?_

_To reach the impossible?_

_To do the impossible?_

_But yet, my hand never reached far enough, even as I smiled at the voices of my friends next to me, no, not really that bitter at all. The word impossible meant what it represented after all. Impossible was impossible, I thought as I levered myself up walk to my friends. I would just have to find another word to describe what I wanted to do._

_Not impossible this time. Attainable maybe. Possible. Probable._

_My feet led me to the car, where everyone had shoved in and was waiting for me. I gave a small content smile at them, before shoving my way in as well. And no matter how cramped, how squished, how much a certain kid was deafening me… I was happy. They were happy. We were all pieces of the tiny picture that we had drawn ourselves, a picture we had all contributed to, to look at whenever things got too dark, too much._

_The picture was us. We gave each other strength._

_So it wasn't about what I couldn't do anymore. What I can't do, would not do. It was, and is, about what I will do._

_There was no option anymore. I had to move forward._

_But that is always how it is, isn't it?_

* * *

"Kyoko, Haru, and Chrome, if you want to listen in. I-pin too, I guess," I started even as Yuni stood there with her hands clasped together like a glowing angel. I looked at Haru, because it was easier. We were close by circumstance. She only knew that I knew two of her classmates, was friends with Haru, was a Guardian for Tsuna, and acquaintances with everyone she knew relating to the Mafia. Friends from circumstance – like friends from coincidentally sitting together in class. Just that.

She wasn't Kyoko – she didn't know no matter how I grumbled about my sunny window seat I actually liked feeling warm. How I couldn't stand humidity, and therefore a Namimori summer, that well. Didn't know I kept my blank face on because I feared looking constipated. That I didn't really mind holding hands _that_ much.

Kyoko was a true friend. If I ever gave Haru a chance, she could too _(but yet, it was another case where I was scared, wasn't I?)_.

"Ten years into the future, I'm kind of, uh…" I hesitated, glancing at the others a little. I-pin perched on top of Yuni's shoulder, staring at me.

"What, Alice-chan?" Kyoko asked, already having that afraid shadow in her eyes. They were both smart enough to know it wouldn't be good. Probably thinking of all the things it could be

_Coma, accident, life-long injury, betrayal – anything but the dreaded D word_

"Uhh…" Now I really wasn't sure if I should say it. Kyoko and Haru didn't need to know, they never had to know. They could live without it. Everyone could have, actually, but I wasn't there to stop Tsuna and the others finding out but I could stop here… I glanced at Yuni, who was looking at me with her big blue eyes, clear and determined.

_Tell them._

I sighed and gave in. Looked at Haru in the eyes, because she was safe.

"Dead."

The silence after that was uncanny. Before, I could hear the other's breathing, echoing in the sphere like we were breathing into really soft gas masks. Now, I could only hear Chrome having a shocked little gasp. Chrome was awake? I-pin hopped from Yuni to Chrome then, taking care of her even as Kyoko and Haru digested my words.

A few seconds later, Haru shook her head in shock.

"H-hahi? No, it can't be." Haru looked bewildered at this information. Kyoko looked like she had just completely shut down. She was staring at me, her eyes wide. "Even Reborn-chan said that there were no deaths in the close family of Tsuna-san for at least four years before _Tsuna-san's_ death, and we're fighting to save our future aren't we? How can you have died? The Millefiore…"

I shrugged. "That's it. I died six years before we went to the future. When I was eighteen, apparently."

Kyoko shuddered, and Haru immediately went to her side in worry.

"Kyoko-chan?"

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she started wiping them before looking at me with such _sad sad _eyes.

"How?" She whispered, and her sadness, her despair, shocked me so much I just blurted it out, hiding behind my blank face.

"Disease. My organs failed, and there was a malignant mutant type of cell that stopped vital processes from functioning, according to Shamal's reports."

"Why you, Alice-chan? Why you?" Kyoko whispered as she slowly got on her knees and grasped my hand. "Why is it always you?"

I frowned at her. "I don't understand." And it was true, for why was it always me? Everyone dies – it wasn't as if anyone was exempt from it. People just… die.

"Haru doesn't understand either," Haru added as she gently repositioned Chrome onto her lap instead, even as Chrome looked at me with those wide eyes. Though not as shocked as the others (she was less innocent that way) but the sheer compassion of it all…

I cursed to myself. _This_ was why I preferred hanging around Tsuna and the guys. They never really were that perceptive. And even if they suspected, they trusted you to solve it yourself. Girls shared. We leaned on each other, sharing our secrets, our emotions, so that we could bear them better. They just seemed to understand so much more. Part of the reason why people thought I acted like a guy was because of my obtuseness.

"Why are you saying it's always Alice-san?" Haru gently insisted, even as she got out a tissue from the bento that they had so carefully wrapped together this morning for Chrome.

Kyoko shook her head. "It isn't my place to tell Alice-chan's past. It's not my place, nor my right, no matter how close a friend is." I was frowning in confusion, as Kyoko took the tissue and wiped her eyes herself. But the tears weren't stopping. "If she kept it secret for such a long time, then she must have a reason. It's not my place…"

She trailed off, and I sat down, crossed my legs and took the tissue from her and swapped it for a dry one.

"Are you talking about what I told you when I was training?"

She nodded. Haru looked between us in confusion, looking down at Chrome and I-pin where they all exchanged lost glances.

I was stuck in my reverie. That day, when Kyoko gave me the reality check that the world didn't revolve around me. The treadmill, the grey, and Kyoko a blotch of cheerfully determined colour.

The Brighteye cover story. I… I didn't realise it was causing Kyoko so much pain.

"Kyoko…" I trailed off, not knowing what to say. Shooting a desperate glance at Haru and Yuni, the two offered no help at all. Yuni for she was still protecting the others from oxygen deprivation, Haru because she didn't know what we were talking about. Chrome was still recovering, but curious.

"Kyoko, you shouldn't trouble yourself with thinking about my past so much…" I said weakly.

I patted her back awkwardly. Why oh _why_ did Yuni insist me to tell them?

"But if you die, doesn't that mean you can't see your parents again?" she asked, blowing her nose and looking at me with watery eyes.

And I felt guilty.

"I'm, I'm sorry, Kyoko," I stuttered, way out of my comfort zone. "I didn't think of what you would feel when I told you that. And this actually. I shouldn't have told you anything at all, now that I think about it–" I was interrupted by a strong grip on the sleeve of my grey wool jumper, stretching it until it was bunched at the bottom, and a pair of fiery orange eyes. So much like Tsuna. But how could they be so different?

"No," she said. "Staying silent never helps anybody."

Haru piped up. "Yes, Alice-san. Waiting for anyone to tell the truth is sometimes more painful that lying, you know." Her eyes narrowed. "So tell me all about what Kyoko-chan was talking about. Your past?"

What?

"Yes, Alice-nee!" I-pin piped up, silent for so long I had nearly forgotten she was there. "Tell us! We're your friends!"

Kyoko didn't tell Haru? But that day, in the kitchen, Haru hugged me, didn't she?

I asked.

"Kyoko just said you needed a hug that day, so I hugged you," Haru said, eyes unwavering. Kyoko's were too, though still a bit red-rimmed. Chrome was breathing deeper now, preparing her strength as she held I-pin's little hand. Yuni was the unwavering rock, eyes closed, the orange of her pacifier giving a steady glow.

Oh gosh.

If anyone told you that facing the Millefiore was bad, I shall tell you there are scarier people out there. Like these two, three, four young girls. I-pin added, five. They were so much younger than me, but how the heck, I asked myself, how the _heck_ were they so strong?

Kyoko shook her head. "Sometimes things are kept quiet for personal reasons, Alice-chan. Your past wasn't my place to tell."

Haru looked at me expectantly, and I just slumped and bashed the back of my head into the dome. Taking out my gun and twirling it for stress relief I considered briefly.

No getting out of it. I gave her a condensed version.

"You know I came from a mafia-related group already, right Haru? They're world elite, number one, and it operates as fifty elites and their underlings as a world-wide network. The sensitive thing here is how they choose those fifty elites." I glanced at Kyoko, who was stroking Chrome's hair now. Haru listened avidly. "An elite starts training at the age of eight."

"That's so young," Haru gasped. I nodded and continued.

"If you're a child with no affiliations and younger than eight, then they drip a chemical into their eyes. If they turn really bright like how mine are," I opened my eyes wide and stared at them, "by the age of eight, then it shows that you have potential and taken in officially accepted into elite fifty. Then you start training, and get the first mission at twelve. I started guarding Tsuna around then. He's Vongola Tenth after all." I shrugged. "But that's the thing – I didn't tell you this Kyoko, but the chemical weakens our immune system."

"So that's why Alice died from a disease," Chrome said, sitting up, holding her head as if she had a headache and ignoring I-pin's little concerned noises. I kept on twirling my gun around my fingers.

"Basically, but this disease was a bit different from that." I looked at them all behind my blank face, gauging reactions. Yuni was smiling, even as she started to look a little strained. Something happening here was important?

We were just getting some really close, awkward bonding, though.

"How is it different?"

"Well, it concerns some Brighteye secrets, so I can't tell you."

Silence reigned supreme. Then Haru gave a little cough. "So Kyoko-chan and Yuni-chan knew this already?"

Yuni nodded, slight smile on her face. "Yes, I come from the future after all, Haru-san," she answered with her clean Italian accent. "Alice-nee has been dead for many, many years, and many still miss her still. Tsuna-san and Hibari-san, especially."

This was a moment of revelations. I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

Hibari? Tsuna I understood, but Hibari?

Why?

Kyoko nodded next. "I found out the day that Tsuna told us about the Mafia. I saw Alice-chan through a door, and asked her some questions. That's why I told you, Haru-chan, that she needed a hug."

Haru nodded, attempting her bright smile. And succeeding. "I understand why now. I just thought that it was just because everyone was feeling down that Alice-chan needed a hug but I guess it wasn't. Thank you for sharing, Alice-chan."

I-pin stared at me silently, although offering her own bright smile.

I gave a tiny smile in return, part in amusement and part also in genuine relief that all the crying was _over_. Guilt had a way of gnawing into one's soul. Also partly because of how Haru suddenly changed her honorific. My smile grew a little bigger.

Alice-chan.

Kyoko smiled this time, reaching over to hold my hand. "Alice-chan's family thinks she's dead, but Alice-chan hopes she would see them someday. But since you died when you were eighteen, she couldn't do it, right Yuni-chan?" Yuni nodded, smile still flickering on her face. "This time we're prepared. We're going to stop you from getting sick, okay?"

I couldn't bear to say no to her face. So I slipped a fake smile on.

"Right."

And it was this moment that Chrome struggled up, propping herself up with her trident. She panted, and we could see that even that effort was taking just _so much_ out of her. But she stared at the dome, before closing her eyes in concentration and thrusting her trident into the barrier.

The barrier didn't break.

This time we were all silent staring at Chrome. When she opened her eyes and saw the barrier still hadn't broken yet we all saw her shoulders fall.

"I, I want," she said even as Haru rushed to support her but she shrugged her off, handing her I-pin to hold in her arms. "I want to become strong."

I looked at her in concern. She seemed so much more fatigued than the anime had implied. The only thing that was keeping her up her death grip on her trident which had yet again planted itself firmly on the floor. When Daemon Spade's influence left her, she had collapsed but…

I don't remember these lines. I frowned at Chrome, thinking if I should panic or not. Actually, nothing that happened in this bubble reminded me of the anime scene.

Narrowing my eyes, I watched.

"You're already strong, Chrome-chan!" Kyoko exclaimed, not knowing just how correct she was.

"No," Chrome shook her head helplessly, "no, I want to become strong." She breathed in again, facing the purple wall she struck again. Then again, and again, and again, pausing between each strike, breathing harsher and harsher. Kyoko and Haru stood behind her, unsure to what to do.

They had never been fighters in that sense.

"Everyone else is so strong," Chrome said quietly, "and one day I know that I won't be strong enough to help Mukuro-sama. I want to become strong. Like Boss, and Mukuro-sama, and Ken, and Alice, and Chikusa… and also because," Chrome looked up with a determined frown. "This is my fault. It's because I was controlled, so I have to save everyone."

"But how?" Kyoko asked, eyes wide even as she tried to hide her still red-rimmed eyes.

"This barrier is an illusion made by Daemon Spade," she said, "the first generation guardian of the Vongola. To break an illusion we just need a stronger willpower than his." She closed her eyes again, before opening her eyes again, her thin arms striking the wall with much more strength than one would expect from such a delicate looking person like Chrome.

It failed, and Chrome fell to her knees, and this time she didn't try to push away Haru or I-pin. "I'm always relying on Mukuro-sama, so this time I want to rely on my own strength." Chrome then stood up again, staggering a bit to the side, refusing Haru and I-pin's help yet again.

I sighed, before heaving myself up and walking over to her. "Being strong is good and all," I said conversationally even as I hooked one of her arms around my shoulders, "but sometimes being strong means you have support. You know, those power in numbers sort of thing. So don't you dare push me away. We'll get out of here soon," I said as I nodded to Yuni.

And she smiled back, positively radiant.

I had absolutely no idea why.

* * *

My only reaction to escaping that bubble of not-quite-death.

_Thank goodness_.

Do you know how uncomfortable it was in there? I shuddered, even as Ryohei was yelling in concern on why Kyoko's eyes were a bit puffy and red-rimmed, and Mukuro turned back into Chrome who practically sprinted towards Ken and Chikusa to say sorry, and Tsuna and everyone stood there smiling and happy.

I joined them and entered their brainless bantering even as Hibari 'hn'ed and walked out the building. We all followed, as Gokudera boasted that he must have been much better than Yamamoto because _come on_ Juudaime was watching him! Yamamoto laughed, and asked me how it was, and I just replied that it was boring (when it was anything but), making him laugh again.

Yes.

Now, this was so much more comfortable. All that drama was all emotional and stuff but this, this was just _it._ No other word for it but familiarity and comfort.

Or, at risk of being cliché…

Family.

* * *

_Alayne yawned. "We're going back to the Rings already? We haven't met for such a long time! Our wills, I mean."_

_G looked at her, irritated. "It's the time for us to greet Primo again, you know. Just…"_

"_Now, now, where's that cool and calm fake Gokudera?"_

"_I am being myself. You're just trying to rile me up aren't you?" G sighed instead, running a hand through his hair._

_Asari and the others just beckoned for them to follow – they were only wills after all, tied up to the ring. They were well aware – their spirits were somewhere else. As a will, they all felt Primo asking them to come out of the trees._

_When they did walk out, Giotto greeted them with a warm smile. Alayne grinned and whispered to G._

"_And _that's_ why dear Giotto-chan is my one and only beloved!"_

"_Just shut up," G growled back. Giotto hid a chuckle even as he looked into the cloudy night sky. He was glad, so glad that an heir had finally shown up with the __original __Vongola in mind. Just like the old days, with G and Cozart and Alayne – fighting for justice._

"_Now let's return to the rings," he said gently, and all the Guardians obediently faded away, going back into the rings to wait, and watch, and sleep for a few more decades more._

* * *

"Maa," I groaned even as I cricked my neck and walked next to Yuni. "I can't believe that I got shunted with the duty of transferring you out of school, Yuni-chan."

"Sorry, Alice-nee."

I flapped a hand. "No, no. We're going back to the future tomorrow anyway. I was just complaining from the relief of it all. Now there aren't any _obvious_ secrets, thanks to you, Yuni. Though you kept smiling at me. Are you meddling?"

Yuni smiled again and didn't say anything.

I looked at her with narrowed eyes, before sighing and looking at the sky. "Isn't the sky so pretty?"

And she smiled, and joined me with looking idiotically at the sky. "Yes."

* * *

"Bye, Grey," I said to him as I stepped out of the car. I looked at his face and sighed. "Don't worry about my injuries already. I'm fine, I got the whole week to heal, didn't I? Yes, I'll be careful. No, I won't gorge on hash browns. It's fine!" I grinned at him, before slamming the door shut and carefully shifting my backpack. Guns near fake pockets? Check. Cargo pants, comfortable ones to move in, yup. Grey jumper, chopsticks, spare as well as the ones in hair?

Check.

Okay then.

I hefted my backpack and walked up the stairs, greeting Hibari with a strange smile (that tiny sentence of Yuni's was making me paranoid – why would he miss me?), and Kyoko with a hug. Ryohei I just gave a thumbs up, which he returned enthusiastically.

The others arrived more slowly, as the four of us enjoyed the sunset. Soon it turned to five, then seven, then the whole group as Reborn asked us all solemnly –

"Are you all ready?"

We smiled back, confident in our response (except for Hibari, who deemed himself too cool to participate in such group activities).

"Yes!"

A blur, and I gripped my backpack tightly as we shimmered back into existence again. Spanner was there, calmly eating the same lollipop he was eating before we left. He absent-mindedly tapped the keyboard.

"Exactly ten minutes have passed. I guess it worked." He turned to face us, leaning back into his comfy chair. "You're all back in one piece."

"Thanks, Spanner," Tsuna said with an amused smile.

* * *

"Breakfast! Breakfast!" Lambo happily cried as he ran in front of us. I stuck my head out into the corridor at the noise.

"Huh?" I asked blearily, still in the process of slugging off my subconcious and into the fully coherent world.

"Alice! I didn't know you were still sleeping!" Tsuna exclaimed, smiling at me with Gokudera brooding beside him. "Did you have a good night's sleep?"

"Ungh? Yeah." I grunted as I scratched my head, pocketing my guns and just held all four of my chopsticks. If they were already going for breakfast, then there wasn't time to do my hair up.

"That's obvious," Gokudera snarked, and I just raised an eyebrow back. Gokudera sniffed at me, before looking at Tsuna in concern. "Were you able to get some sleep, Juudaime?"

Well… Tsuna did look a little sleepy.

"Nope, I was too nervous." Tsuna looked down at the floor.

"I understand. Byakuran and the real six Funeral Wreaths could appear at any time…" I yawned and didn't follow the rest of what he was saying. Then I scowled at my hair. _That_ was the problem with growing out your hair. It tangled all the time, in such difficult ways that it was near impossible to untangle with fingers. As I struggled with my hair (a battle fought… and lost) Yamamoto laughed.

"There's no use in worrying, Tsuna! That's why we went through the succession test!"

Ryohei joined in with some rough Japanese my morning brain couldn't process. The Gokudera added something inspiring, so I guess it was my turn to say something like:

"Yeah, Tsuna. We can do it."

Tsuna looked at all of us and smiled. "Thank you… everyone."

* * *

I ate through breakfast without contributing much, just a normal nodded thanks to Haru and Kyoko, a concerned glance at Yuni – which Reborn caught – and I was in the middle of my third omelette (I always ate a lot for breakfast, and Yuni's omelettes were really nice) when Giannini's voice came over the intercom.

"Emergency transmission! Emergency transmission! Please go to the conference room immediately! I repeat, please go to the conference room immediately!"

I sighed, and quickly ate the last few bites of omelette, drinking my whole cup of juice in one go and walking out of the room even as Tsuna assigned Bianchi and older Fuuta (it was still strange to see him so… annoyingly tall) to look after the girls. I shot them a grin, before going out the door.

I'll run when they catch up. There was no use in wasting energy. I passed the conference room and went straight to Yuni's room. It was only a little past there.

"Yuni, you changing?"

There was definite surprise in her tone. "Y-yes!"

"I'll wait for you. You're the princess who needs protection after all," I said with humour.

As I waited, I peeled up the shirt of my jumper to inspect my bandages. Nice and tight – they won't easily rip soon, and they would make sure my guts stay inside my body, my skin not tearing, etc, etc.

Yuni burst out, and we nodded at each other before running together towards the adjoining corridor between the kitchen and the conference room.

"Sawada-san!" Yuni exclaimed when she saw Tsuna. I backed her up, standing slightly behind her so that we were protecting her from all sides. Tsuna's eyes widened.

"Yuni! Why are you only with Alice–"

"Tsuna-san!", "Yuni-chan!" Kyoko, Haru, Bianchi and Fuuta all came running around the corner at once, and Tsuna felt overwhelmed. "Tsuna," Bianchi asked seriously. "What is happening?"

Tsuna stuttered, eyes widening. Why were they all _here_ where it was the most dangerous right now? "W-well…"

"_VOOOOOOI_," Squalo yelled, as he stalked towards us, looking heck angry and pissed.

"Squalo," Yamamoto said, surprised, the person who was the most close to him in this place. "Why are…"

"What is this?" Squalo yelled, his eyes assessing the situation and the number we have, as well as our current strengths. His eyes lingered on me, probably because of my stomach injury, and Yamamoto, who had been very out of it when he went back to the past. He hadn't had time to see Yamamoto had gotten his conviction back though, but I think he was starting to get it when the wall behind him just _blew._

Squalo's reaction was amazing. He just closed his eyes, and immediately started pouring out invisible Rain flames to counterattack the attack of Storm flames from the hole even when the dust hadn't settled down yet, and we didn't even know if there _was_ a dangerous intruder.

Yuni breathed in, eyes wide.

"Idgit. I finally found you, Yuni-sama."

Great. I sighed, before sticking two chopsticks in my hair for safekeeping with a simple twist and keeping a steady grip on my other pair, my left hand reaching for a gun.

Zakuro was here.

* * *

**Were you all surprised that I didn't update in a fortnight? I hope it was a pleasant surprise though, haha. See you! Hopefully! Next week, or the week after. YAY, FIGHTS! NO MORE EMONESS! MUAHAHAHAHA**

***cough***

**As you can see, I'm excited. I like Belle, in all her snooty glory. Byee!**


	48. That pulls one in

No, no! It was happening all wrong! Was this the butterfly effect, the thing I had been trying to stop so much? The battle wasn't supposed to happen this way! Why? I panted, gasping, left hand clutching my stomach even as my right clenched the one chopstick I had left. My guns had run out of bullets long ago.

"Yuni, stay back," I grimaced, coughing a little as my arm thrust her back. It wasn't her time yet.

Why? The answer was right in front of me. For there was another factor I never had before, wasn't it?

Belle grinned, even with one eye stabbed out and blood streaming down her face.

"Sorry, Alice!" She chirped, suddenly so happy and lunged. I grinned back, throwing myself out of the way.

And the day had started so well too…

* * *

Running away from Zakuro wasn't that hard, to be honest. Squalo was there, and he was the most reliable person we could have had on our side right now. Strategically speaking, the only actual flames that could negate Storm flames were Rain – and he was an assassin. He was a sword king. He had a heap load more experience than us. He was strong and uninjured.

And he was on our side.

Zakuro yawned, as I stood protectively in front of Yuni, who was staring at him in a kind of horror and acceptance, her hands tightening on something in her cloak. Obviously the Arcobaleno pacifiers. I had to tell her not to be so obvious… after we get out of this mess.

"I thought I was screwed when I was thrown out of the transfer system blew up and my tracker got fried," he blinked sleepily at the fried piece of metal in his hand that presumably was the tracker, "damn it. All's well that ends well." He closed his eyes, making a motion to rub his eyes.

Gokudera got angry. "Are you taking the piss on us?" _(Or, translated from Gokudera-swearing – are you looking down on Vongola, which means looking down on Juudaime, which means looking down on me as his right-hand man)_

Yamamoto smiled, adjusting his eye patch. I blinked. When did he get one? But he _had_ been heavily injured, and I didn't see them most of the time back in the past anyway. I tuned in on what he was saying, even as I shuffled Yuni backwards ever-so-slowly.

"He's a weird one," he said with a calm grin and holding up a lit ring. Just as he was going to get his box as well, Squalo's arm shot out. His expression was fierce.

"You're all useless," he said quietly, in a way that you just _knew_ he was serious. "Take Yuni and get _out_!"

There was a general exclamation as everyone, even Kyoko and Haru who didn't know who this silver-haired man was, gasped. They knew he was on our side. It was enough.

"Squalo!" Yamamoto protested with his eyes wide.

"EH?" Tsuna asked, drawing attention to himself. They were all stupid, and that was why Squalo was the only one who could do this. Tsuna was boss, and he was ignoring the enemy! Squalo's eyes, _my_ eyes were trained on Zakuro with a reason. I frowned to myself. Damn it. _That _was why my work was cut out for me… But Tsuna was good at attracting attention. Zakuro's eyes shifted to Tsuna in curiosity, and the slow recognition that seemed to define everything he did. "Do you mean to fight alone?" Tsuna continued yelling.

I shuffled Yuni backwards even more. Now we could run out two ways easily, without interference. Bianchi shifted as if trying to protest, but where she positioned herself… My frown decreased a little.

Good old Bianchi.

"Are you too thick to get it through your heads?" Squalo yelled now, strain finally showing through his face. "You're all already _under attack!"_

I felt embarrassed when Gokudera and Yamamoto looked surprised – but Tsuna didn't, not as much as I expected. Hyper intuition had its uses, it seems.

The moment Squalo pointed it out, Zakuro visibly quadrupled his force, and Squalo tensed and sent out a matching wave in response, a little stronger that Zakuro's – but not by much.

Clicking safety off my gun, I held my chopsticks with only three of my fingers as I took Yuni's hand. Bianchi had shielded us from view. Yuni was helping too, not resisting as I nudged her to where I wanted her to be. Keep talking, analyse the fight or something… Yuni whispered something to Bianchi, who nodded, before drawing back and letting me take the lead again.

"An invisible flame of storm!" Basil shouted, and I grinned. Yes, state the obvious, buy time. Reborn shot a glance my way, and I knew that he had picked up on what us girls were trying to do because Haru and Kyoko had stood where Yuni had been. They were trying to make it look natural.

And Reborn, after tricking him so many times, was trusting me to take care of Yuni. Reborn kept his gaze on Zakuro now. "If it weren't for Squalo," he said needlessly, filling up the silence, "we'd all be ash by now. Nothing beats Varia quality."

There was no point in Yuni staying here anymore. Saying a quick sorry, I stole that ridiculously big hat off, screw Giglio Nero tradition for now, and walked into the corridor to our right before running, through where the girls had come from before. There were three exits that Tsuna and the others could take, and my mind couldn't remember which one they took. Just remembered something about Kawahira. But the blueprints were still fresh in my memory, and as I ran, I estimated the point where the paths all split to go the exits.

Yuni was the target. Her staying in front of the enemy was pointless. Better get her to safety – or a safer place first. And on the monitor, it showed all the pieces had scattered in different directions. Therefore, Zakuro would be the only one there.

It didn't stop me from tensing, gripping my chopsticks in the way I knew could be lethal if I punched.

Yuni gently took the hat away from me once more, smiling gently at me as she put her cap on again. I sighed, shaking my head at how _ridiculous_ it was. It was white, puffy, and sat on the head with tassels. Tassels that could tangle, hat that could slow a person down (the aerodynamics weren't exactly _good)_ and white for heaven's sake! It stands out!

Hearing the echo of footsteps, I tensed, just in case it wasn't Tsuna. But Tsuna came along, Yamamoto with Reborn on his shoulder, Bianchi with Lal and Shouichi safely carried between two people. "Exit A, Alice!" Tsuna shouted, and I shot a scowl at him.

"Don't _shout it out,_ Tsuna!" Tsuna's face blanched as he realised why I was telling him that, but as they rushed past we joined him and the group, Gokudera getting on my case about how _dare I glare at Juudaime! _as Yuni went to Bianchi.

"Did you tell him, Bianchi-san?" Yuni asked, her eyebrows in worry.

"I did. Tell Squalo thank you, right? He said to just 'get the hell out'." Bianchi replied, Lal next to her struggling to keep up with everyone's fast pace. Giannini had joined sometime in the run, after leaving for a short while, to give Reborn, Uni and Lal something they put over their pacifiers.

By then, we were nearly already outside.

"This way!" Giannini yelled, as he jogged as fast as he could, his face getting red splotches from the exertion. Then we made it out to sunlight, and everyone nearly lost their guards in their relief.

"At least we made it out alright," Tsuna sighed in relief, as he began checking if everyone was here. As he was counting, Giannini looked anxiously at the Arcobaleno.

"What do you think, Reborn-san? Lal-san? Yuni-san? Of the cover for the Trinisette radiation?"

When he received positive responses in all three cases, he wiped his head in relief. "Fortunately the Trinisette had become weaker ever since the Mellone Base disappeared. In this secondary radiation, the cover cuts up to 99% of the radiation."

Tsuna smiled, finishing the man count. "Th-that's good news… At least now we can all move around town."

Reborn was not happy at how people were relaxing. He had every right to be.

"It's too dangerous to go back to the base, and we should expect to find a few of the enemy in town already. How do you intend to protect Yuni, Tsuna?" He reminded him, and of the duty he had picked up. Tsuna started – he had obviously forgotten in the relief.

"Eh? How?" Tsuna glanced at me, and I looked straight back at him. Then he glanced at his feet, scratching the back of his head. "In this case… I guess… uh… we need to hide Yuni in a safe place…"

"Of course," Bianchi pointed out. And it was. Tsuna was stating the obvious, but it was so _Tsuna_ I smiled.

"B-but… where could… my house maybe?" Tsuna wondered aloud, clutching his head.

Now that was the dumbest suggestion ever made. Shouichi corrected him even as Kyoko and Haru came up to me and Yuni.

"Your houses and Kokuyou land have already been listed by Millefiore. It's too risky," he said, his glasses on his face slipping a little in his effort to look at Tsuna.

Tsuna sighed, dejected. "I knew it…" Gokudera looked at Tsuna's face and immediately suggested a place to make him feel better. Meanwhile, I looked at Kyoko and Haru.

"What, Haru? Kyoko?"

"Then how about the place we used for Varia battle?" Gokudera asked to the side.

"Nakayama hospital?" Tsuna exclaimed, sudden hope.

Kyoko smiled at me and whispered in my ear. "Are they trying to find a safe place? If they would accept it, Haru-chan has an idea."

"Alice-chan, do you think they will accept it?" Haru asked anxiously, looking at the boy's faces. I turned my smile on them.

"I think so. Suggest it first, okay?" Haru nodded, just as Tsuna sighed in defeat at what Shouichi said about Nakayama hospital.

"Ah!" Shouichi smiled, face amused. "That hospital was taken down two years ago. It's a parking lot now."

"Oh!" Haru clapped her hands for attention. Everyone looked at her. She swallowed, before smiling sunnily. "Then we have an idea!" Kyoko smiled behind Haru supportively. "I'm friends with a realtor! She showed me a 'secret hideout home' and told me I could use it if I ever decided to run away from home!"

Barring the fact that a friend would think she would want to run away from home in the first place. Haru was smart, but Midori was still a Japanese school. A prestigious one no less. Pressure was high.

"A realtor?" Tsuna exclaimed, face disbelieving. But Reborn smirked. Or smiled. Take a pick. I sighed at all this, before tweaking Yuni's hat thing straight. Really. Squalo was fighting underground with one of the real six funeral wreaths, we were standing in an open area, and we were having these kinds of conversations?

Really. Life with Tsuna and the others were never boring.

"It could be unexpectedly well-hidden," Reborn said, looking up at the girls, and they squealed in joy before jumping at each other in joy… hooking me around the neck as well. I gagged as they held me in headlock as they jumped up and down in joy.

Oh great. Yes, this was _so_ fun.

And Yuni had that happy-bitter smile on her face again, as I was forced to jump with the girls to stop myself from getting strangled. As I unhooked my head, I gave Haru a small smile before standing next to Yuni again.

"It's good enough?" Tsuna questioned before sighing when he was out of ideas. He dead-panned. "Th-then everyone… Let's go to that realtor…" He trailed off, absolutely _enthusiastic_. What was he suspecting as a safe house? Another secret underground base or something?

I shook my head, following Yuni like a dutiful shadow.

"But we'll be detected if we move in a group," Reborn said.

"We should split up," Basil suggested, about to say something more when the ground suddenly shook, and I tuned out the others to stare at the exit to the Vongola hideout. It was going to explode anytime now, and I manoeuvred Yuni yet again behind me before tugging her down.

It was the least I could do.

"GET DOWN!" Someone shouted, and they all threw themselves to the floor as I shielded Yuni from the worst of the splinters of burning wood from where we had left. I winced, trying to ignore a few pricks on my back.

"What's going on?" Tsuna yelled, "Is the base blowing up?"

Gokudera frowned, glaring at the base. "What kind of battle are they having down there? Cleanly and quietly my ass!"

Yamamoto was quiet, alert, until Squalo's voice was heard over the fire behind us. "VOOOIIII!" He immediately looked up and back, mouth forming the shape _Squalo…_

And Squalo was crouching there, at the exploded entrance looking in some type of horror and resignation and determination at us _still near the exit of the base_. He obviously didn't want us to see him in that state… There was blood. Everywhere.

"This'll end quicker than I thought…" Tsuna saw him next. "Take Yuni and run… _Get as far away as you can you PIECE OF SHIT!" _

He turned, his eyes narrowed even as his sword cracked and he screamed, trying to slice his vitals or his legs, but I didn't stay to watch. I was already on my feet, with Yuni as far away from the Zakuro as possible while staying inside Tsuna's protection zone. Tsuna and the others were still on their knees. Yamamoto got up, as Giannini shouted something unintelligible about how there was an explosion.

_Yeah, totally not obvious._

"I'm going back!" Yamamoto said, his eyes trained on where Squalo had just disappeared into the smoke. There was another huge clash that shuddered the whole building as Reborn disciplined some sense into him. Tsuna looked at Haru.

"Haru! Where's the realtor?" When Haru yelled where it was, they all staggered up. Lal was pale, near the point of paper-white like mine. Serious, but yet Bianchi only gave her a concerned glance before looking up.

"There's no time to lose!" She yelled, dispelling all hesitations. "Let's go! Run!"

Huh… I dead-panned even as I ran. I couldn't help it. If it had gone my way, we would have gone far far away the moment we got out.

Running next to Yuni, I-pin in the lead in front of us and Lambo next to her, staring backwards at the explosions with a type of awe only a person who used explosions as a weapon could appreciate – he was slowing down as well. I sighed, before yanking him up by the hair (not my fault – easiest part to reach) even while picking up I-pin the same way.

"Alice-nee!" I-pin squeaked in surprise even as Lambo stared backwards over my shoulder.

"No matter how trained you are, I-pin, if you run as fast us with legs short as yours you'll tire quickly," I said to her frankly. "We need to protect Yuni, right?"

Her face went from surprised to determined.

"Right!"

But it wasn't only Lambo and I-pin tiring. Those two I could deal. But Giannini had been puffing since we cleared the open lot we had been standing in, Kyoko although sporty was still coughing from the smoke and dust from the explosion and couldn't get solid breath. Shouichi was in pain from how he was grimacing at how his two carriers were jolting him.

At least Ryohei, one of the people carrying the stretcher, didn't seem like tiring anytime soon.

Lambo who was looking backwards still pointed to something. I spared him a glance.

"Something flew up!" He said still in a daze of amazement. At that everyone ran even faster, even Giannini who wasn't lagging at the back anymore.

"This way!" Haru called _loudly. _I cursed. Why did they shout everything! "Kawahira realtor is just around that corner!"

Even giving the _name?_

That's it. After all this, I was going to get through a course that told them how to be discreet and communicative in an emergency situation. I was starting to tire as well though – two kids as well as a stomach wound made it hard…

Suddenly I-pin lifted off my shoulder as Yuni smiled back at me.

"Let me help, Alice-chan."

I grinned back, before shifting Lambo to a more comfortable spot. He stared up, wide-eyed at me, not even bothering to try and laugh annoyingly.

"We've made it!" Haru said, immediately going to the door and trying to open it. When it didn't open, she slammed the door, even as Tsuna detachedly said how retro it looked.

Retro?

I sighed. Tsuna…

"Please open up! Obaa-chan! It's Haru!" She stood back, looking at the store horrified, glancing up at the sky.

"Did they go out of business?" Yamamoto said, with a smile that didn't fit on his face.

"Oh no! Obaa-chan!" She was banging on the door again before she fell through, a man wearing traditional Japanese men dress holding a large bowl of ramen on the other side. I analysed him, deemed him no threat (he didn't threaten us in the both anime and manga – but he was mysterious, this Kawahira. I should check up on him when we get back.)

I scanned the sky instead, and the man's glasses glinted when he saw my eyes. I blinked, before smiling. Oh, he knew the Brighteyes?

Interesting. Very interesting. I waited for him to invite us in, which was taking a lot longer than I could stand. (When had I become so impatient? Ah yes. Life-threatening, huge powerful monster flying towards us right now. I wonder _why_ I was nervous about having _such_ pleasant conversation _outside.)_

"Hurry up and get inside. You're being chased, are you not?"

My eyes trained on him now. I felt him sending flames out – he was strong. And he was helping us, and if we get inside right now, we wouldn't be in danger.

"How do you know?" Tsuna exclaimed, not taking a step forward. And as the boss didn't go in, everyone else didn't either. Stupid mafia and respect.

"There now," he said slowly his voice getting a tad bit irritated. "I'll take care of the real six funeral wreaths for you."

"What?" Tsuna said, eyes wide, and one could see his mind turning all the different possibilities in his mind. Yuni was also staring calculatedly at the man – as Arcobaleno boss, it was understandable. He claimed to know they were being chased and by whom. He probably knew why too.

Her.

"Now hurry up," he said shortly, stepping inside.

"How does this guy know about the six funeral wreaths!" Tsuna exclaimed, hands burying themselves in his hair.

"I'll explain later. Get inside quickly."

I totally second that.

"A fellow named Zakuro is after you." Gokudera got into Kawahira's face.

"He is very suspicious, Juudaime!"

In response, Kawahira kicked them inside. "Excuse me, my hands aren't free right now. Just trust in your old uncle Kawahira!"

And we finally, _finally_ stepped inside as Gokudera and Tsuna puzzled it over together in their heads.

"Kawahira! Uncle… Uncle Kawahira…"

They looked at I-pin in Yuni's arms simultaneously. Kawahira took the hint and crouched down in front of her, as Yuni had already put her down. I-pin looked at him in curiosity and confusion.

"Hello, I-pin. You're very charming as a youngster too. But you'll become a very lovely young woman someday. Though it would be nice if you could do something about the soggy noodles."

Tsuna stared. "He's that Uncle Kawahira after all! He's definitely different from how I imagined…" he exclaimed. Reborn, who had been silent, assessing this strange old codger called Kawahira decided on something.

"There's no time. Just do what he says for now." Everyone looked at Reborn, and Kawahira's face when Reborn cocked his gun was just a blank face. He took a slurp of his noodles even as Reborn pointed it at him. It wasn't threatening, but it certainly wasn't trusting. "If he's lying, they we'll just blow his brains out."

I think it was because he had felt Kawahira's invisible flames protecting us outside too. But an ally without a known motive was just as suspicious as an enemy.

Tsuna stared at Reborn. "Don't say scary things!"

Reborn dismissed Tsuna.

Kawahira didn't react. "Well then, let's hurry. Hide behind any of the furniture inside. If you just keep quiet, then I'll take care of the rest." I complied, nodding at him in respect, which he nodded back, near imperceptible.

Yuni smiled up at him. "I don't know who you are, but thank you very much." It was proof that Yuni's smile could melt anyone, for it was the first time he smiled when he met us.

"Yes, yes. Get going."

Yuni stepped inside, and Kyoko made space for her to hide behind the desk she was hiding in. I stayed near the front, behind an armchair. I wanted to make sure.

For he had a hell-ring, didn't he? Just like Fran and Genkishi. But with Hell rings, there were special characteristics with each one. Maybe I could recognise it and look it up in the Brighteye archives later on.

But Zakuro came, and I dipped my head down.

My curiosity wasn't enough of a reason to endanger my friends. Just in time, for Zakuro opened the door, saying he had a…

Superior sense of smell?

I hugged Lambo to me, for he was near me and seemed like he would do something stupid. I frowned at him, and motioned to him to be silent with a finger on the lips. He kept silent, and we sat in tenseness again.

Kawahira's voice was uncharacteristically goofy and innocent. He was a good actor.

As befitting of a Mist user.

"Nothing for it then," Zakuro drawled. "I'm going to burn down the house next to it, and the next, and the next, to smoke you all out."

Yuni tensed, her eyes wide.

"N-no!" Kawahira said, and heard the sound of tripping sounds – and like a magician, when Zakuro was preoccupied with the ramen soup nearly spilled on him, Kawahira sent murderous intent fast, really fast, to an illusion far away.

It was fleeting. I wasn't sure if I could actually felt it, but Reborn was tense and we shared a glance before both looking at Kawahira's direction.

_Was that the power of his Hell ring?_

Zakuro took the bait.

"Wait, idiot!" He flew off. After a moment, a minute, two minutes, Kawahira came back in with a smile and his ramen safe in his hands.

"The six funeral wreaths are gone. We should be okay for the time being." Everyone sighed in relief, and I shoved Lambo onto Gokudera, and he scowled at me, but his attention was quickly drawn back to Kawahira as his smile faded and he looked at Yuni.

"But Byakuran is a horrible man," he said, "to send assassins to hunt down such a harmless girl."

Yuni looked up at him, eyes wide.

We had been right, he knew about it after all.

Tsuna decided to take the step. "E-excuse me, how do you know so much about us…"

He got cut off by a very smart move on Kawahira's part. Distract us with other unimportant information – that is, things about him. "Ah, that's right. On my way to Nami-chu, I met a student. Is he our friend?"

Ah.

Hibari.

No worries. He will beat Daisy soon enough.

* * *

Yamamoto smiled. After hearing Dino and Hibari had defeat Daisy, he proposed that he was going to go back to Vongola base. Even after repeated kicks from Reborn, he hadn't changed his mind, so Tsuna gave him permission to go.

"Yamamoto, you're really going back to the base no matter what, huh?" Tsuna sighed. Yamamoto grinned.

"Yep. Sorry, but you're not going to stop me. This is Squalo we're talking about, so I'm sure he'll be just fine." I nodded in agreement. He got bitten by a shark, trapped in a water-tight, air-tight school building, left for dead, and still survived. "But I just have to check," Yamamoto said, finishing with a wry grin.

Tsuna sighed again, but I couldn't see his expression from my position behind Yuni. "I guess you're right… I'm sorry, we can't go with you but…"

I stepped forward with Bianchi, Spanner and Giannini. "Don't worry. He has us." Bianchi said, folding her arms confidently. Giannini shot a thumbs up. "I'll lead him straight to the base's secret entrance."

"I'm going too," I said flatly.

"Me too," said Spanner flatly.

We looked at each other, before staring at Tsuna's disbelieving face again. He looked shocked.

"This is a surprise! I would've thought Giannini would be too scared!" Fuuta exclaimed and actually meaning it. I smiled a bit. That was Fuuta, so little tact sometimes.

Giannini looked a little offended. "The Vongola base is the proud work of my sweat and blood! I can't possible rest until I've seen its condition for myself!"

Spanner contributed. "I have to see if there are any parts left that I could use in my Mosca."

Gokudera looked at Bianchi, and blah-di-blah… Bianchi was actually quite excited at the thought of Gokudera caring about her, cutely enough.

Reborn looked at me.

"You're needed here."

I shook my head.

"You'll be fine. Be prepared for some unexpected allies and watch Lambo." I frowned at Lambo, he was still sleeping.

"Yuni needs you."

"She'll meet someone even more special soon enough."

Reborn stubbornly kept silent, but his gaze was strong, and clear in its message. _I am not happy you're going._

But Vongola base had monitors, if they could be salvaged, and trackers, and things that I needed if I wanted to find Belle.

* * *

Yamamoto looked out the door, opened just a crack. "I don't sense any hostility. Do you Alice?" He glanced at me, and I closed my eyes, head also at the crack. A bit, to the front.

"The normal level to be expected."

"Okay! Well then, we'll be off! Take care of Yuni, Lambo's sleeping, but tell him bye," Yamamoto said to Tsuna with a smile. Yuni stepped up at her name.

"Ah, everyone…"

And we all knew what she was going to say next. I looked at Yuni, from the middle of checking if both my guns were still in place.

"You don't have to say thanks, Yuni," I said to her. Bianchi gave a motherly smile before cupping her face.

"Yes, we're doing this of our own volition." Bianchi looked up at Kyoko and Haru. "Now that both Alice and I are gone, you girls take good care of Yuni as well, alright?"

Kyoko and Haru smiled, I-pin gave a happy chirp. "Right! Take care, Alice-chan! Bianchi-san!"

I nodded at them, entirely serious for our impending mission. Yuni smiled back at them. "Thank you very much!" Then she froze. "…ah."

We all laughed it off, sharing in the happiness and the fear that _maybe this would be the last time we saw each other_ and if we did we would want to leave with a smile right?

Then Lambo woke up and laughed the living daylights out of everyone, surprising them so much. But it was time to leave. We gave the outside coast another scan before going out, quietly calling goodbyes. Spanner gave a quiet goodbye to the sleeping Shouichi before coming to join us.

"Tsuna, be alert," I said, eyes serious. Some stray hair tickled my face. "Believe you can beat them."

Tsuna blinked at me, before giving me a shaky grin. "Of course!" I looked past him to Yuni, before nodding and leaving, Bianchi calling a last 'take care of Yuni' before we left.

The streets were eerily silent and empty. We had to be extra careful – if there were people, and there were none, it would have been easy to walk around – easier that it was now. Because the streets were so bare even the slightest movement was so _obvious_.

Giannini sweated buckets, but kept going while Bianchi, Spanner and I followed, with Yamamoto at the back protecting our rear. Leading us to a small alleyway with a vending machine, he pressed a code which flipped open a fingerprint scanner. After the confirmation, the whole vending machine shifted itself into the wall, revealing a trapdoor, which Yamamoto heaved up for us ladies and Giannini. Then we went down, Giannini last to close the trapdoor and activate the device on the bottom of the door to slide the vending machine over it.

When we had made sure that the machine was back into place, we all started climbing down, down, and down in the darkness, dust tickling our noses and the acrid smell of burning plastic, metal, and blood making us dread what was below.

* * *

We had to clear out rubble, for the bottom of the stairs was clogged with debris. We were only lucky that the stairwell was able to hold three people standing at once. The two had to hang onto the ladder. So I hung on the ladder as well as Giannini while Bianchi, Spanner and Yamamoto kicked the rubble away to reveal a half-collapsed hallway.

All of us holding our breaths (and holding it a little too late – Spanner, who coughed like crazy), we went through, careful to not disturb anything. Thinking back on it, I was just glad I was with the calm members of the group.

If _Lambo_ was here.

…If _Gokudera_ was here. Both together?

Gah.

The thought made me suddenly scowl, but only Spanner noticed, who just shrugged it off. Maybe he thought it was normal.

Heck, I think everyone Vongola thought it normal that I scowled all the time. As Yamamoto would say…

Haha!

Haha indeed.

But Yamamoto was devoted to searching for Squalo now, walking forward, carefully removing some debris, or burnt hallway, until we reached the ones in better condition – Giannini actually cried in relief to see that the truly wrecked hallways were the one that we entered the Base with, and another three… apparently. He knew the place better than I did, and Vongola Base was at least twenty-stories deep.

I wandered around, and went to my room. It was intact, and I took out some stuff – like a comfortable jumper and bandages and some bullets and… what else?

I shrugged, before going back to join Yamamoto's search for Squalo again. It was nearly three hours later that I called for a stop.

"Yamamoto," I said to him, "we should eat dinner. The kitchen was a bit burnt but yesterday's leftovers are still edible."

"We have to find Squalo first," he said determinedly.

I looked at him in contemplation. It was just a waste of time and concentration to try and persuade Yamamoto out of these moods. I shrugged.

"Okay, I'll bring your food here. I'll go to Bianchi, and don't wander too far from where you are now for the next ten minutes or so."

Yamamoto shot a grateful grin at me.

"Thanks, Alice!"

* * *

After we ate dinner, we went back to searching, though half an hour later they persuaded me to go to Tsuna and the others. Tsuna's headphones were still on him, and Spanner and Giannini had worked their magic on the computers. Bianchi was still gathering medical supplies and searching for the things she had wanted, Yamamoto trying to find his Squalo, Giannini and Spanner having so much to do…

It was unanimously voted that I go to the surface to Tsuna and the others to tell them of our situation – how we were still fine, and they think they would be here straight after Yamamoto finds Squalo.

"What?" I said, blinking slowly trying to remember all they said. I was pulling an all-nighter. It was near midnight. After hearing them repeat it, I gave a slow smile and wave before pulling myself tiredly up the ladder.

Walking through a deserted Namimori on high alert again, and stumbling through a pitch black forest wasn't really my idea of fun. Neither was a glare from Gamma – foxes trapping me in an electric cage, a Leon-gun to the face, and nearly everyone staring at my arrival like it was enemy.

Which of course, it could have been. Of course.

"Hey?" I said feebly.

"Alice!" Gamma shot Tsuna a look. Reborn cut in.

"She's our Star Guardian." Gamma nodded, before retracting his wolves and holding out his hand in apology.

"Sorry, we weren't sure if it was an attack or not, even if Hime said that the grand battle would be at dawn."

I shook my head. "No problem, I would have reacted the same way." He smiled. I nodded and shook his hand. Yuni went around the corner to see what all the fuss was about when she saw me and smiled.

"Alice-nee!"

"Yuni." I walked to her, and she dragged me over the fire before arranging some blankets for me. I felt a little awkward. "No," I said as she shoved a can of soup into my hands, "I've already had dinner. There was some leftover food in the fridge at Vongola Base." Seeing their looks I tried to give a smile.

"It's not that badly damaged, though… we haven't found Squalo yet."

Yuni's face fell. "Oh…"

I shook my head. "Don't worry. Squalo is about as killable as the Terminator. It's really really hard for him to die. Promise." I said to Yuni, but she didn't relax at all. I sighed but moved on to other topics. Smoothing the blanket and staring at the fire, I recounted the damage and the stats.

They in turn told me about what they knew – Yuni's power and Byakuran's power fading, and how that's why Byakuran was so determined to get Trinisette before it died out. How Parallel worlds worked and stuff – only I heard that lecture before. All nice and companionable and just… calm.

I was nodding off when everyone else went to bed. But Yuni was awake. She couldn't seem to sleep, and I wasn't about to make her face her last night on Earth, living, _alone._

That would just be wrong.

So I struggled to stay awake and talk to Yuni, which led my thoughts all over the place. We girly talked, like any other female teenager those few hours. We laughed over chocolate and broccoli, and Lambo and her life, how we met, who we found attractive (Yuni glanced at Gamma), what colours, families, hobbies, random facts and trivia, and the matter of… love.

Which led me to the question.

"Yuni," I said extra extra slowly as sleep began to overtake me. "Why did you say that Hibari missed me? It doesn't make sense."

Yuni's laugh from a comment before softly died. The embers of the fire flickered from a breeze and threatened to die or to rise up and burn once again. I shoved another branch onto it.

"Why, Alice-nee," she said softly. "It's because he loved you."

* * *

"_It's nearly morning anyway," Belle snapped before looking over the direction they _knew_ the Vongola brats were. It was time. "Let's just attack."_

_Byakuran smiled and shrugged. "Why not?"_

* * *

**Thank you for your continuing support! I hope people tell me their opinion of this chapter - as an experiment I wrote from the manga instead of the anime, haha! XD It got stuff moving, ya know? But I do hope you liked it all.**

**See you next next week, I guess! Cos I have tests again. TT_TT**


	49. And drags ones doubts out

_It was __a__ normal school day __when__ I asked Yamamoto a few questions. He was the best to talk to, you know? Nice, __considerate__ – and he would actually think about the question seriously before a sincere reply. Not like Gokudera or Hibari, who might think about it but never answer, or Tsuna and Kyoko, who would think about it before giving the nice reply – the one you would expect. Lambo was just out of the question. Ryohei too (after all, my questions weren't about boxing). Chrome, even if available, would have been too shy. Grey?_

…_He was too much like a grandpa for me to just hand over all my random questions. I gave him enough every day already (which reminds me that I really have to learn how to use the microwave)._

_So it was at lunch one day, when Gokudera had rushed Tsuna off to somewhere (the infirmary, though it wouldn't have helped much since it was _Shamal_ and well…) and the sun was on my back and Yamamoto on my right._

_My eyes drooped as I tried to not fall asleep in my lunch._

_Yamamoto gave his little 'haha' laugh that he always did, before shaking my shoulder a bit (my fanboys glared, the fan-girls disapproved). "Alice… Alice! Don't sleep in your lunch!"_

_I shook my head a bit before yawning and picking up one of the chopsticks I had dropped when I was… not dozing. Yeah. Definitely not dozing. I blinked again, giving Yamamoto a blank look. "Ah, Yamamoto. Is lunch finished?"_

_He grinned. "Nope."_

_I remember sighing in disappointment before continuing my futile battle with my lunch. Stupid chopsticks. As I poked unenthusiastically at my food, I overheard some girls laughing at the front of the classroom. Tuning my ears, I raised an eyebrow, wondering at the actual _interesting_ nature of their conversation for once. _

"_Hey Yamamoto, you hear them over there?" I pointed my head over that direction. Yamamoto tilted his head as well, and listened on in the conversation. His forehead creased into a slight frown._

"_Yeah? Though I didn't really catch the question so I don't really understand what they're saying."_

"_They were talking about this shoujo manga and how it would feel if you loved someone, but knew you had to leave. What would you do?"_

_My question was harmless enough. I didn't even have any inflection on it, but a question like this… Particularly in this world. My mind flashed to a world ten years into the future, and a pair of sad blue eyes in a face far too young (and far too in love…)_

_Yamamoto looked at me, the playful twinkle in his eye dimming a little. He raised his eyebrows, just a little, showing his surprise more effectively than any inflection in the voice would. His look just said 'you're serious about this, aren't you?' and I guess I was. When my expression didn't change, he went into contemplative silence._

_That was the good thing with Yamamoto. He picked up so many things. No need to even __say__ stuff out loud._

"_I truly loved this someone? And I had to leave, huh." He stroke his chin in contemplation, before looking at me and shooting me a disarming grin. "Does this person love me back though?"_

_Gamma. He had loved her, in his own way, but whether it had been the love that she had wanted though…_

"_Yes."_

"_Oh, that makes it hard." I raised an eyebrow at Yamamoto, lunch fully forgotten now. Looking at him, him with a face that showed so much of his confusion. Why did that little fact make it so hard? My question must have translated onto my face, for he gave me a dazzling grin again. "It makes it hard because if they didn't love me back I would have just left, and made myself forget them."_

_I blinked. "Why?"_

"_I took the meaning of leave as in forever." Yamamoto shrugged. "There isn't any point in making my pain last. If they didn't love me, I would wish for them to forget me too. But if they loved me back, now__…__ that makes it complicated because I know what I would do."_

_He had my full attention now, as his logic had always had a peculiar twist that __my __mind could never have._

"_If I'm thinking about the situation so painfully, that means that I love this hypothetical person very much, but I still have to leave, and that leaving is important as well, right?" Smiling, he shrugged. "Haha, but still, I'__d__ leave."_

"_You'__d__ still leave?"_

_Yamamoto's eyes closed as he tilted his face to the ceiling. _

"_Yes. Yes I would."_

* * *

"Haha, stop joking Yuni!" I actually chuckled. "Hibari's asexual. It's pretty obvious."

Yuni smiled. "That's what he wants everyone to think."

"Yeah, sure." I yawned dismissively. "I kind of believe he physically isn't able to love a human." I chuckled a bit. Whoever actually fell for Hibari… well, I would feel sorry for her. Or him. You couldn't really discriminate with these things…

Yuni blinked at me, before shaking her head with a smile and a tiny shrug. "Okay then, Alice-nee. I'll ask you a question then. What would you do if you grew to love two people?"

I blinked. "Me? Uh, if I fell in love with two people and they don't love me?"

"No, the two boys love you, but you love the both of them, but all three of you don't know the other's feelings."

"Then I won't move. There's no point. They'll eventually move on anyway, and I'll _move on_." I smiled wryly. Yuni actually looked a little disappointed.

"Alice-nee, you should always try hard for love, even if you have a short life!" Yuni protested, and I paused a bit, looking at her with what I hoped was my blank face. Yuni herself knows she will have a short life, but yet she tries to love Gamma anyway. I have a short life, and she's claiming… something?

"…are you meddling, Yuni?" I asked, realising. "That isn't the future, right? I mean, I think loving one person is a pain, loving _two_ would just be even more trouble." Besides, I added to myself, it was forbidden for Brighteye to love. Simple as that.

"Love isn't expected," she only said back wisely, looking across the fire to where I knew Gamma was sleeping.

I didn't really know what attraction she had with Gamma – he was curt, he was bossy, he was old, and Yuni knew that he had loved her _mother_. But yet, she still loved him, for all his faults. I mused in my head, my eyes drooping a bit as my mind processed her words.

Loving two people huh?

With Hibari as one of them? Hmm.

Nah, as I tried to stare at the fire to stay awake, that's impossible.

Gamma had had a plan ready – the plan that I knew wouldn't work but would be saved by the timely appearance of Fran and Mukuro. So in the end, it _would_ work, so I dozed off in the middle of the sentence, still a bit guilty for leaving Yuni awake alone (but still a bit glad that I had at least it made it this far) and thinking I would still have a few good hours of sleep left, it only felt like the next second when Yuni's panicked scream woke up Reborn, Gamma, Lal – all the truly trained ones. I only woke because she was _right next to me_ and she had a heck of a loud voice when she wanted.

"Help!" I heard fuzzily through exhaustion and sleep, "Gamma! Uncle Reborn!"

I immediately forced myself awake and stared at the sky – it was still dark.

"Reborn!" I screamed, even as Yuni could only open back away from the figures on the other side of the fire towards me and Gamma. Reborn in baby form, even though so severely weakened, would not ever let Yuni get hurt in any way – he had much more experience and had a much lighter sleep than Tsuna would ever have. Reborn's eyes had flickered open in an instant, and a gun in hand that wasn't Leon in his hand. His eyes narrowed, taking in the situation in less than a second and immediately fired Chaos shots at Kikyo, who was floating on the side with the lake.

_Good._

Gamma had gone from leaning on the tree to standing with box weapons opened before I could even scream out my next words even as I ran forward, nearly tripping on my blankets and pulling Yuni fully behind me. It wasn't her time yet. I would fight to the end for her life to be even that few seconds longer.

"_IT'S_ _AN_ _ATTACK_!" I yelled, nearly incoherent as it ripped out of my throat. Gamma and Reborn formed a triangle around Yuni with me, who had my guns out and firing, drawing out my Star flames in a huge glob and dumping it over Yuni. She was invisible now, but it didn't help that we were in a triangle _around_ her. It made it pretty obvious where she was. I was Brighteye, and we meddled. Reborn, strongest Arcobaleno (and what, Yuni was the Arcobaleno boss, so what chance did he have to protect _her_ huh?) and Gamma. The name Gamma spoke for itself. He was renowned for his loyalty.

All who would want to protect Yuni was right here. In a triangle. Over a seemingly _empty_ spot.

I tugged Gamma's arm, even as I broke our formation (Reborn's eyes flickered to me and he understood immediately, the good thing about having that hitman near – he always, always understood) and jumped away from our formation, dragging attention to himself as he shot out yellow flamed Chaos shots towards a floating Bluebell, who stuck out her tongue. Her cloak flapped, and I nearly wanted to cover my eyes. Or yell at her to put on decent clothing. _Please._

She was freaking naked under that cloak!

…Wasn't she cold?

But well. Back to the matter at hand.

"Gamma," I hissed, "can you trust me to protect Yuni? You're the most obvious target. They'll attack you first." _For obvious reasons _remained unsaid.

He knew exactly what those reasons were. His face tensed, but he gave a terse nod. I ran off, giving a yell that sounded like I was half orang-utan half italishese (Italian, English, Japanese) to Yuni saying 'follow me!' I think she got the point.

That tiny tassel I left uncovered followed me, and after knowing that she was listening, I covered the tassel from her hat as well. I ran, trying to draw attention to myself. If I could guess what they were thinking…

Just as I expected Zakuro and Kikyo went for Gamma, who had been running covertly away, ignoring both Reborn and I. Bluebell targeted Reborn. But I couldn't see her. Where was she?

The only one who could have induced Byakuran to attack early.

There was a gleam of unnatural vivid colour on the other side of the clearing.

Belle was crouching there, eyes on me with her trident in her hands.

Waiting.

My mind immediately asked, what was she waiting for? What, what, were there reinforcements, things that weren't expected, did she bring some miracle weapon with her too…

I heard someone trip even when there was nothing there. I paused, looking towards the rocks that Tsuna and the others had been sleeping against. Gokudera, Lal, Gamma. They had been assigned to Zakuro. Gamma was near Belle, right near the opposite side of the clearing (the complete other direction to where I was heading). When I heard panting, I retracted my flames a little just to see a glimpse of blue eyes, I nodded towards Tsuna. She blinked back.

He was waking up, pulling on his gloves and about to take a Dying Will pill. I ran towards him, gratified to hear hurried footsteps behind me and stopped him from taking them. Not yet.

It wasn't his turn yet.

"Aah!" He flailed, trying to shake the hand off his arm when I pulled him down, behind a rock, safe from _her_. Belle's eyes had still been staring at us. She would make a move soon. For some reason, I just knew. Tsuna was my 'main character'. I was trying to get in contact with her.

Wasn't it so very obvious I was plotting something to her attack? This was all a chess game to her, pieces moving perfectly with perfect roles. I just had to prove something like a pawn could move like a Queen and she would be delineated.

But how?

_How?_

"Tsuna, it's Alice," I whispered right into his ear, pulling his head to my mouth. "Yuni is here." I pulled my flames away from her boot, gestured down and Tsuna's eyes widened. "I covered her with my Flames." Closing my eyes a little, I pulled out more Flames out of my Ring, grimaced at the huge shiny glob (it was my life, dammit) and covered Tsuna as well. But I didn't make him invisible just yet.

"I'll rally up Gokudera and the other people. Reborn should be coming towards you soon. Before that, don't use your Flames." Tsuna's eyes looked up at me, panicked but so determined.

"But I have to fight, Alice!"

I shook my head. "No. Don't you see?" I gestured over my shoulder, at the dawn still thirty minutes away, the shattered safety blanket of Yuni's prediction, and the fighters.

_Belle she was still here please Tsuna understand quickly_

"Byakuran isn't _here yet._ Their main fighter isn't here yet, Tsuna!" I gripped his wrist, before grimacing when it tugged on my stomach wound. Argh, all that running wasn't good at all.

"You're all hurt, Alice." I turned my eyes full force on Tsuna, my eyes serious for once. I knew. I knew all too well, how I had never really been serious with Tsuna. Always lazy, joking, teasing, bored. But now I was serious. And Tsuna understood. Just as always, Tsuna understood.

I smiled. "We're all hurt. That's why we need you, Tsuna. Don't you think?" I pried my fingers from Tsuna's wrist and reloaded my guns. His eyes were on the empty cartridge. "We need you now, Boss."

"I-I'm not a boss, Alice!"

"A boss isn't boss by choice. If people follow, you're a boss. Now go!" I whispered harshly and switched Yuni's invisibility temporarily off. I made them hold hands, before switching my flames 'on'. It didn't really work like that, of course. It's hard to control the Flame's attributes, but they were both invisible.

Good.

"Hawk! Falcon!"

My beautiful two birds shot out of my Vongola Box, and Falcon immediately flew off into the forest as low to the ground as he could manage. Footsteps followed.

I peeked over the boulder.

Belle was gone.

I cursed in my brain even as I ran towards the others, which Lal had already struggled to get up and had her centipede out already but not really contributing to the fight much. First things first.

"Ryohei. Basil."

Ryohei was standing protectively over his sister, and the Sasagawas looked at me. "Bright!" He exclaimed. "Good, now you're here, can you protect Kyoko? I have to join the fight!"

I faltered at the unexpected request.

Dawn was still so far away. Varia had only arrived on the nick of time. Mukuro arrived still after that. I couldn't expect them to suddenly arrive early and save our skins. But… I couldn't expect our fighters to last so long against them either.

And Yamamoto still wasn't here. And wouldn't be here for a while yet. I could always hasten it… but then, what if Squalo died? Then I would be ruining this world's future and I didn't want that to happen.

So no calling Yamamoto yet.

I had to trust somebody. Tsuna was back up, the only one who could hope to defeat Byakuran. But we had Reborn fighting right now, buying precious time. He normally didn't fight – this was a serious rise in our fighting ability.

But we also had liabilities. Kyoko, Haru, Shouichi.

"I can't. I have to fight too. But I have a job for you, Ryohei. Get Lambo, call Basil and go for the green-haired guy. He's called Kikyo. He wants to lure you three to the lake, where you were going to be stationed anyway. Pretend to be taken. He wants to split us up."

That was what I thought about Kikyo. His raptors, the lake, and his box all matched. He could make them think his snake thingies only appeared on water, give a fake weakness as well as splitting enemy strength. He wouldn't wait long to do that though. He would only lead fighters out of the scene if we provided decoys fast enough.

The problem was – were they up to it?

Could they survive?

_No._

"How do you know?" Ryohei frowned down at me, before shaking his head. "No, I can't leave Kyoko behind. I am her onii-chan. I have to be strong."

Kyoko looked at her brother. "Onii-chan…"

"I will lead her, Haru, and Shouichi to Tsuna." I waved my hand at Hawk, who had been harassing Bluebell and her hair… making her cloak flap.

I winced again.

Was she really not cold?

Hawk flew over and screeched at us. I shushed him, and he looked a _little_ guilty.

"Haru, Kyoko. Can you carry Shouichi's stretcher? I know you too can. Follow Hawk, and it will lead you to Tsuna. Falcon is already with him. When you two are safe with him, Hawk will fly back to me. If he doesn't fly back at most twenty minutes, I will look for you three. Okay?" I didn't give them a choice.

They didn't protest anyway.

"Go, Ryohei. We need you." I looked at him seriously. "You have to last at least more than twenty minutes. Don't use your trump cards too soon."

He was torn, his eyes flickering to Shouichi being carried by the two girls towards the forest. Then to Kikyo, who looked as if he was going to fly down and actually join the fight instead of waiting from the side with the lake.

He gave a grunt of frustration, before giving a nod in recognition to what I said and running towards Lambo, tugging Basil by the arm and running straight at Kikyo.

"You're the enemy aren't you? I'll beat you, to the _EXTREME_!"

Kikyo smirked and flew away towards the lake. I pushed aside my worries for now.

I had to believe in a party. If I had to choose, it would make sense to believe in my friends.

Hawk came back, and I blinked at him. That was… really fast. How far had Tsuna moved away from the camp? Apparently, not far. That wasn't good. She was still there. I had to find her but there was just still _so much_ _to do_

It wasn't as if I could just tell Belle to go and be like, hey! I'm your eternal rival! So don't fight anyone else, okay? Just sit there like a good girl!

…sigh.

Gokudera was trying to shoot down Bluebell, who got distracted by Reborn again, who had gotten Leon to transfer into an automatic, shooting like crazy at Bluebell who had no choice but dive right into a blast of electricity Gamma blasted out.

Then Zakuro was there, and Gamma was forced to use his remaining volpi for himself. Reborn went epic, shooting two places at once with his Leon automatic and a normal gun all the while getting a few shots in. Bluebell's cloak was in worse wear, holes and a few grazes (...she really needed clothes). Zakuro was better. His face seemed not to be lazy but actually excited. Reborn was an opponent he _wanted_ to face.

That was good and all but…

"Gokudera. Tsuna is protecting all the girls and Shouichi. You're the one we have to rely on to get Zakuro from here and you have to last," I held up two fingers, "twenty minutes. You need to delay twenty minutes." Gokudera knew the extent of what I was asking. Most battles didn't last that long. Adding to the fact he was injured... "You _have _to last twenty minutes, at least."

Gokudera looked at me, his eyes calculating. "Zakuro?"

I nodded. "To the place where you planned to ambush him. Don't pull out all your trump…"

"That's obvious even without you telling me," he retorted with easy grace, grimacing as he straightened up. I looked in worry. Gokudera was in bad shape.

"Bring Lal and Gamma with you, just like planned before." His eyes snapped to me.

"I don't like you ordering me around but…" He trailed off, looking at the huge green explosion from where Gamma attacked Zakuro again. Reborn got a little respite, and used it to shoot at Bluebell. "Got it."

"I'll leave the planning of how to get Zakuro away to you."

"So Reborn and you are going to face Bluebell?"

"No. Reborn is going to face Bluebell. I have to face Belle. I sent Ryohei with Lambo and Basil to Kikyo, and told them to last twenty minutes as well. We _all_ have to last twenty minutes. And don't die."

"Or the tenth would be sad." He finished my thought with a smirk. It was kind of reassuring to see that smirk on his face. So falsely confident. And he knew it, yet smirked anyway.

"Yes. Go!"

He darted forward, slower than usual but caught Lal anyway. He quickly muttered something, much shorter than what I had talked over with him, and Lal caught on and nodded towards him then me. I nodded back, and got back to _my _problem at hand. Gokudera was a tactical genius. We had scouted our areas before, which was why it was advantageous to draw them to our intended ambush places.

Belle. Where were you?

Falcon screeched, sound splitting the air from where Tsuna had headed, and a girl's scream.

And I knew where she was.

Tsuna! Yuni! I gripped my gun even more tightly. They were in danger, but Reborn was still fighting Bluebell. She wouldn't kill them, never would. But… but all the things that one could do to a person without killing. I ran out of the clearing straight into the trees, barging in and wanting to yell their names – before slowing down.

There was no point in barging in like an elephant.

Falcon screeched again, louder this time, and I cursed. Who cares about it being no point?

I ran and Hawk flew in front of me, leading me in the direction of its counterpart.

There was a clearing in front, and I saw a shimmer of grey flames in the way. I ran straight through, knowing I had alerted her to my presence. When I burst into the clearing, I was expecting something big. Like Tsuna going for his Dying Will pills, Kyoko and Haru screaming with Yuni standing determined and Shouichi looking at the scene in horror, unable to help.

What I ran to wasn't like that. It certainly wasn't relaxed. But there wasn't any fight.

Tsuna was there, standing in front of Kyoko and Haru who looked confused. Haru looked like the one who screamed, and Yuni was standing there over Shouichi. My Flames that I had hid them with were nowhere to be seen.

Belle was standing there, relaxed and looking straight at me. I stepped in cautiously, slowed down to a stop and took in the situation. They didn't even look that panicked. Spending a second to put my hands on my knees to get my breath back a bit and, looking back up again, I was sure. She wasn't attacking. Then what was the panicked scream for?

Belle was just standing there.

Smiling.

Creepily.

Gah. Whatever.

"Tsuna?" I asked, stepping forward towards him. His stance didn't move, but his eyes flickered towards me. "Kyoko, Haru?" No-one moved. No one even twitched. But their eyes – dilated.

Then I turned towards Belle. "Belle, why aren't they moving?"

She smiled. "Alice, do you like this early attack of mine? I suggested it to Byakuran you know?"

I was startled by her _friendliness_. It was entirely natural. It was so every day, 'hi, what did you get for math?' tone. I blanked.

"Belle, what did you do to them?"

"I thought it was genius. Just because it's a prediction doesn't mean that we couldn't attack first. Even if Byakuran needs to recover a little, we don't need to. So don't you like it, Alice?"

"No. Now answer the question."

Her smile didn't falter. "I just used my flames on them. See?" She snapped her fingers, and suddenly I could see the flames covering them all, a grey shimmering layer that covered them like gel. "I'm sure Jared told you about this."

I stared at them. "No."

She grinned. "What? Did he only tell you about invisibility and how you can cut off signals?"

"He did mention one more. Never told me though. I think. Or maybe I heard wrong."

"No you didn't," she simply said. "I can't cut off signals with my flame – that's perfect for infiltrating, and that's just not me. If using Grey flames takes up some our life, then it should reflect a little bit of our personality, right?"

I tensed.

"Don't say that in front of my charge. Why don't we move somewhere else, Belle?"

By now, I was standing right in front of Tsuna so if she ever did attack me, she would reach me first. But not too close – didn't want the aftershock to affect him too much. He couldn't negate any attack at all now.

Belle was talking too much. She was more careless than usual as well – her hair wasn't even neat, which kind of shocked me a little.

"But unfortunately because we Brighteyes are practically living corpses anyway, and we don't belong to the world, so everyone has the ability to make something invisible. Like this!" She gave a happy chirp and snapped her fingers again, and all of them disappeared. Breathing a deep breath to calm down, I stepped backwards and stuck a hand backward.

A feel of flames and Tsuna's jacket.

They were still there. I looked back at Belle.

"So what does yours do?" I said after digesting the information. If my specialty was to cut signals, and she said she had something different—I would have to question Jared after this.

"Immobilisation."

…

I blinked.

Okay. That was dangerous.

"Err… nice."

"That's all you have to say?" She asked, happily twirling a ball of grey Flame over her finger. I looked at it warily, before stepping forward again. Then I spun my own ball of flame out, with Hawk and Falcon screeching respective goodbyes as I sucked out their Flames.

So we stood off. Both my abilities with this Flame was passive. She had one that was aggressive. Not good.

Delay tactic number one. Engage in conversation.

"We don't need to do this, Belle," I said as I looked at her. "We're both doing our missions after all – yours is to jump parallel worlds, I'm sure we can find a compromise somewhere…"

She gave a harsh laugh. "Sure?" She shivered from the breeze even as she held her ball of Flame close. "We don't need to do this? Alice, you're not serious are you?" Her unnatural eyes stared at me, so vivid and strange in that perfect pretty face. "What about your family? Don't you want to see them?"

I flinched.

"How did you know about them?"

Belle stared at me. I finally understood why people didn't like to be intimidated by our eyes. They bore into you, overwhelming and harsh and unforgiving all at once. Such colour shouldn't exist – maybe in digital media, but there weren't even pixels, the tiny spaces to fill the colour. It was near solid. But I didn't want to fight her. I didn't want to fight a fellow Brighteye.

"How do I know, Alice?" She asked. "How do I know?"

Silence, the breeze whistling through the forest chilling my too cold fingers. Her eyes, our eyes glowed in the dark. We stood there. Then softly…

"We were friends once, Alice. A long, long time ago." She smiled wryly. "Best friends, even."

I stared. "But—" I faltered.

"But how? I'm tall!" She exclaimed. "Yes, I know you don't like tall people either, Alice." She gave a chuckle at my dumbfounded look at _how the heck did she know I didn't like tall people?_

"We shared everything with each other. In a world far, far away, we arrived at the mansion together, trained under Jack together, went and supported our characters together. At the end, we realised that we had to fight and I won… I won, and I still don't know if it is really what I wanted."

An explosion from the left told me that the fight was still going on but…but…Belle was crying. It was a quiet sobbing, her face was still annoyingly perfect as she did it but.

She was crying, and somehow I knew she was just the type of person to not like a person knowing a weakness, showing weakness at all.

She didn't seem so much like the arrogant person that I had met, had imagined to be, had painted two dimensionally that that was all she was.

_(It was easier that way, for if she was actually nice—actually human, then how could I ever put her into… how could I fail her?)_

"We simply fought, and I won. I won, Alice, and moved on from that world and had to start over again, eight again. But this time you weren't there and I learnt the hard way that parallel worlds were different. So different. You didn't know me in that world, Byakuran had learnt of me from his parallel world vision, plotted how to use my abilities to use his advantage. He had been my friend too you know. But he wasn't anymore. He wasn't. In that world, Byakuran wasn't the nice kid I knew. He was the kid who knew of a million worlds in which I existed to help him."

It was suddenly silent, and I felt fear. Maybe for the others. Maybe for Tsuna and Kyoko and Haru and Shouichi. Or maybe, I felt fear… for me.

I, I realised, didn't want to see Belle as anything remotely human. So I could crush her down. Go towards the path of victory, to family, to myself.

But she kept on talking.

"Every time I moved on, every time I had to win. I had to beat you, the friend that didn't even recognise me, because I had already beaten you so many times just because you have to protect that Vongola trash. Condemn you to not see the family members you once told me about. Your little brother and sister, your mother, your dad, your grandmamma and how excited you had been to see them again – to ruin that for you, my first, best friend, so much better than me, so much of an obstacle to my own family."

"Tell me how I can stop. After condemning you so many times, I don't have the right to stop anymore. For I'm fighting too, for the people I left behind in yet another world. I can't really remember them anymore. Did you know that?"

I shook my head in a silent no. What could I say in the face of this?

"Once I realised that I was in my world. The world I had originally came from. And I had passed my mother on the street, and I _didn't recognise her_. She was my mother!" She faltered. "And I couldn't recognise her."

I finally interrupted. "Why—why are you telling me this?" I asked, trying desperately to keep my blank face on because I didn't want her to see. I couldn't pretend to understand what she was feeling – oh but I understood.

When I saw Jack and Emily at the table, the photos on the bench, and the realisation I could have been there. I could have done so much. I could have achieved so much more. Watched Emily grow, be there for my family. That moment of realisation when I found I actually didn't recognise my own little sister…

To not be living a half life in another world, in a body that didn't function like a normal person's. Doing a Trial that was forced on us.

_Do it or you won't be able to see your family for the rest of eternity. Was there a choice?_

"What does it mean to be a Brighteye?" She mused out loud, looking away from me towards the foliage above.

"We live our second life," I said, my voice cracking, weary. Tired. "Do our mission."

"But we aren't really living, are we?" Belle smiled down at me. And for once, it wasn't unnatural, fake or with that cruel twist of the mouth. "We aren't living. Do you know how many times I wanted to end it all? Just finish the trial?" She grinned at the ball of Flame in her hands. "But we can't even kill ourselves, for that's murder. Bill would just revive us anyway. And I've gone too far."

"But why are you telling me this, Belle? _Why?" _I asked, suddenly just so frustrated. Why? Why was she telling me all this, making me feel so sorry for her, so sad, so scared at what she was trying to do, scared of what she was implying–

_(is heaven really worth doing all this for?)_

_(Ah, but the reply says, we have gone too far dear. We have simply gone too far to turn back)_

"That I'm human too. I know I'm pretty, vain, bitchy, annoying. But doesn't everyone have that side to them?"

"So?" I said, suddenly feeling so heavy.

So… _old_.

"That's why I have to beat you, Alice." Belle shifted. "I have to let Byakuran win, even if he is twisted, even if I know I'm not on the good side, because that's the only way I'll know that all that I've done is worth it."

"That underneath all those layers of bitchiness there is still that human that is worth going to our eternal paradise?" I finished.

Belle hadn't stopped crying, but she laughed anyway, getting into a battle stance. Her trident was at the ready.

"I missed your bluntness, Alice! You've always been the only one that could make me laugh. Now, come at me." She tilted her trident. "I'll show you how superior I am," she said with a hint of her previous air of arrogance.

I didn't want to raise my gun at her.

In my mind, I asked myself. Was this the reason why she told me all this? So that she could have easy victory?

Why did she tell me?

_Oh why?_

With a heavy heart, I tucked in my guns. Took out my chopsticks, lit them with Flame and looked at her. I felt old. She _was_ old.

Weren't we all a bunch of misfits trying to belong?

"I'm ready Belle."

And I smiled at her.

* * *

_Twenty minutes. He had to last for twenty minutes, and Lal had lasted for four minutes before getting a shot in the stomach and collapsing. Then Gamma had gone in, lasted for seven before Gokudera had finally lured Zakuro to their ambush place. There was the tree._

_Gamma lasted another minute, and Gokudera didn't try get a good hit in. He had been good enough to beat Squalo. They would have to keep their best techniques. Zakuro was starting to get bored._

_No. He couldn't let that bastard get bored, or they'll get roasted within the minute. _

_Gokudera let loose a few dynamite, no specialties, and with that distracted Zakuro enough to be interested in them both._

_They fought together for two more minutes before Gamma gave a slip – amazing already, for he had fought for ten minutes against a monster who had been getting impatient and hitting them heavier and heavier, telling them that yes, _he could get stronger yet…

_He had to last six minutes. _

_Feh. Gokudera gritted his teeth and smirked up at Zakuro. That was nothing for the Vongola Tenth's Right Hand man, right?_

_And although he had no time to be worrying over someone else, he briefly wondered what the other two enemies – how his allies were doing._

* * *

_Reborn was holding his own in his fight. The woman wasn't particularly strong, but she was just hard to catch. He had only to delay – he hadn't missed how she had said to both the groups. Twenty minutes – that was when it was supposed to be slightly after dawn._

_So his goal was twenty five minutes. He was the best hitman in the world, and even if his pride, the indignity of him being in this body lessened his skills__,__ he was still one of the best. He could hold his own, even while beating some lessons into the thick skull of his students._

_But the girl was flighty. She was obviously impatient. She wanted to move onto bigger game than Reborn, whom he suspected that she only thought him a baby._

_At the most, realistically, he could hold her was for fifteen before he would be forced to shoot her for real – and killing her wouldn't be good for Tsuna's growth. So realistically, fifteen minutes. Then she would go after another of the groups. Ryohei or Gokudera – both in opposite directions_

_He would try his best. When she left, he wouldn't chase her. He had to find his idiot student to protect Yuni correctly, and trace Byakuran._

_Funeral Wreaths… Reborn thought absently, with even a little boredom (Bluebell wasn't the best opponent there was. She wasn't really even that strong) that there shouldn't be a Star ring for the Mare Rings._

_If he remembered correctly._

_And of course he was right, as he did a somersault over a branch, landed solidly on another branch, shot at Bluebell (who had her cloak open – why didn't she wear clothes?) and shot her again. She dodged._

_Reborn shrugged._

_Close enough._

* * *

_Ryohei panted, exhausted, Lambo already out, Nosaru, Tazaru who had joined only to fall a few minutes later._

_They had to delay for twenty minutes. He had only been able to delay seven. Lambo took two, and the Kikyo-guy wasted another minute by talking. Nosaru and Tazaru three minutes by flying around._

_His maximum, his new skill only lasted for three minutes! He couldn't use it now._

_He was a fighter. He knew when to use it. But. This was the situation? No it wasn't. He had to waste more time. More and more time… Time he didn't know how._

_Watching Kikyo's raptors come closer – he prepared himself as they suddenly the came out of the lake in a sudden burst of speed. Ryohei grimaced, blocking, counting the seconds. But it went past him._

"_LAMBO!" He yelled, turning around knowing yet again he would be already too late._

_Before he saw a flash of cold steel eyes._

_In Hibari's hands was Lambo, knocked out, grazed, but still, so wonderfully, alive._

"_Sasagawa Ryohei." Those eyes assessed him, before a large flame lit on his ring, and out came one spiky… ball thing. Then another, and suddenly he was facing a whole wall of spiky porcupines. "Stand back. I shall take on this thing."_

_Ryohei could only break out into a relieved smile._

"_Hibari!"_

_Now he could save his three minutes, his precious three minutes for later._

_Ryohei took Lambo, Nosaru and Tazaru backwards before stepping back up behind the Disciplinary leader. There was an irritated glance backwards, but nothing pushed him away. "I'll just back you up," Ryohei assured him._

_There was a stiff reply as propagation versed propagation._

"_I do not need back up."_

_Ryohei grinned and resisted the urge to put a head-tackle on him and ruffle his hair._

_Now they had a chance._

* * *

Belle's story had lasted for at least five minutes, maybe longer. Before that, there were already another few minutes.

We could last.

I could last that long. But maybe I just won't fight as hard as I normally would. Maybe.

My only concern was, as I dodged the sweeps of the trident, me stabbing back, were what the four people behind me were thinking of Belle's conversation.

Our fight was dull. It wasn't exciting, it wasn't interesting. There was a lack of energy to it, a resignation. We both didn't want to fight.

We both didn't.

But we had to.

So we did.

* * *

I was breathing in harshly, my wound having already opened up in some part of the process of dodging between the trident and smashing into a tree. Tsuna and the others were still immobilised. But alive.

I wondered why Belle wasn't using that Flame on me.

Then there was a flash of light from the horizon. A dull glimmer between the trees, the sky's gradual lighting missed from the focus and adrenaline of the fight.

The sun was rising.

It was dawn.

Relief crashed into me so fast that it seemed as if all the adrenaline of the last few minutes had drained away – time suddenly went by quicker, and Belle's trident actually nearly went through my head, before I dodged in the last minute, only to have her foot waiting for me. I tripped, tumbled, and her trident was just about to go through my stomach _again_ when there was a flutter, and a hand blocking my vision of the sky.

Jared's light-hearted voice sounded like what he had ten years ago.

"Stop, Belle. It's enough."

And this time, the relief was so great I really would have collapsed on the floor if I was standing.

Jared was here.

The Varia was here.

Which meant _Mukuro_ and all it entailed.

I had survived, Tsuna had survived. If the others had survived as well then, then…

I had won half the game.

_and halfway pushing Belle out of never seeing her family again_

"Jared. How nice of you to visit me." Belle smiled. I took the time this time, to get up with a grimace and a hand over my stomach (I really really didn't want to see any intestines today), using my ball of unused flames to inject back into my box again. Hawk and Falcon came out, and then quietly fluttered one on my head and another on Tsuna's.

I noted with interest that the Grey flames on his body was drawn towards Hawk on Tsuna.

Could I order someone else's star Flame as well?

It made sense. How else could Belle dispel my flames on Yuni and Tsuna?

"Hawk, absorb the Star flames on them all." Hawk bobbed its head, and I focused on the flames and tried to hurry them along. It was hard – they naturally didn't want to listen to me, but when they met Hawk it just became easier. They weren't mine but they helped Hawk grow.

At the end, Hawk was a finger length bigger than it was last, and Tsuna was free to move. "Wh-what was that? Alice! Are you okay?"

Seeing as there was a bit of red that was seeping out onto my shirt…

"Yeah, I'm fine, Tsuna."

By that time, Yuni was free, and Belle was attacking Jared fiercely, much much faster than she had with me.

He after all, wasn't Brighteye.

"Tsuna, take Yuni and go. Reborn should be waiting for you in the clearing. If he isn't…" I waved to Falcon. "Falcon will track him down, won't you Falcon?"

He gave a quiet chirp – and off he flew. Yuni stood up ready to follow Tsuna.

Tsuna didn't move.

I frowned.

"Go!"

"Alice, what was that all about?"

"I'll tell you later," I dismissed. He would probably forget afterwards anyway.

"Promise?"

I looked into his eyes. Our foreheads were nearly touching, and I was once again struck by how much he had grown. And by that look. Ha… I sighed. He wouldn't be forgetting anytime soon.

"Promise. Now go! We have to protect Yuni! Jared and I will hold down this front. You can get updates from Reborn, so go, boss." I tacked the last bit on with a wry smirk, and Tsuna gave an irritated frown before standing up and leading Yuni off towards where we had first came from.

Hawk had finished freeing Kyoko now, who was bending over Shouichi while Haru was starting to wriggle her fingers in impatience.

"Alice-chan," Kyoko broached the topic. I glanced at her.

"I'll tell you when I tell Tsuna." Watching the fight between Jared and Belle escalate, I was really just so glad I wasn't there, fighting her.

Just so, so glad.

I groaned, stuffing my head in my arms, trusting Jared enough to know he would protect us—strong enough to delay Belle. But not for long. Not for long.

For she would want to go towards Byakuran soon. It wasn't for us that we were fighting so hard – it never had been.

It was all for the world, for the plot that we had blighted and now we had to save.

What a system.

"Jared, I'm going to go towards Gokudera," I called. He barely acknowledged me – Belle was strong, horrendously so, and he just frowned in response. I nodded and turned towards Kyoko and Haru.

"You two follow Tsuna."

"Alice-chan, you're hurt," Haru said in that matter of fact tone of hers. "You come with us."

They were hoisting Shouichi's stretcher again.

"No, I am still needed yet." I glanced back, at Belle and her beautiful face that would have perfect without those eyes. Those unnatural eyes… "I still have things to do. I still haven't won," I sad with a grimace not entirely from pain, "yet."

Without a word more I turned and tread towards the forest, leaving the battle behind me.

There was more to be done. Much more.

And hey, there was the fleeting chance that maybe if I did lots of stuff, my mind would blank out and stop thinking for a change.

* * *

**Yo! Late. Uh… I had tests. I still have tests. But this is long! XD**

**I got a few reviews saying people like extras. To say the truth – yeah, I love writing extras too. They're fun! I've got some happy extras planning for a change. I mean, you all wanted gender bending number 2 right? Haha!**

**Set the mood with JYJ 'in heaven'. Here's a link if you want to try the story. It's pretty cute. And I kind of imagine the guy in the mv as Tsuna/Hibari then it makes my heart hurt (in a good way, haha). XD ** w ww .yo utu be w atch?v =yAeSx eBcCe Y

**So now I hope you're all at least a bit glad with this chapter. I'm torturing poor Alice even more. I feel kind of bad, but it's all for the greater good. There's a deeper meaning to Belle's existence! YOHOHOHOHO!**

**And hey look! 1234 reviews! That's cool. THANKSYOU REVIEWERS! AND READERS! AND ALERTERS/FAVOURITERS! YOU ARE ALL THE BEST!**

**Okay. I will shut up now. I can only hope readers like this and forgive me, hahaha?**


	50. Tear

I had only gone into the forest for two minutes when I heard a scream of pain that wasn't from a girl – so either it was Shouichi who was _unconscious_ or Jared. But Jared was an assassin, he wouldn't scream, and it just so highly unlikely that I paused walking for a second.

Then I heard why when I heard the scream again.

"_RUN, ALICE!"_

I didn't question. I just ran, cursing because running would just aggravate my injury more. Maybe I really should have truly rested and became a vegetable in those days in the past. But then, my muscles would degenerate, so it was a double-sided blade. I still had… yes, I had three chopsticks. Where was chopstick number four?

Whatever.

I saw rather than heard a person behind me, a shadow from the camp that I was just so lucky to be near when she caught up to me. Bluebell had left the clearing already – Reborn was there and… Yuni had arrived safely.

Good.

I turned, trying not to make noise, as I was only a little far off and if I could see them they could see me – I did not want Tsuna to be distracted again.

A shadow from behind – I twisted and turned, reverse gripping my chopsticks. To my (eternal) surprise, my chopstick actually hit something. The chopstick left my hand with… whatever I had stabbed; another was torn away from a slightly sweaty grip. I shook the hand off even while the cry of pain died off. That scream attracted attention, I knew, because from the fire there were footsteps. I inwardly cursed in my brain at whoever it was, when I gave myself a little second to look over my shoulder – Yuni! Why was she here, of all the stupid idiotic kind things to do! No, no! It… this was happening all wrong!

One chopstick left.

"Yuni, stay back," I grimaced, coughing a little as my arm thrust her back. It wasn't her time yet. Why was this happening _now? _I looked up, and Belle was grinning even as she held two of my chopsticks in a bloody hand, one of her eyes stabbed out and blood streaming down her face.

She was smiling at me. Why did she catch up to me? She could have just gone for Yuni and… where was Tsuna?

"Sorry Alice!" She chirped just so happily, and lunged at me. I threw a smile back, throwing myself out of the way. Yuni did step back, apparently – and Reborn was here now too.

"Where's Tsuna?" I asked him, and he cocked his gun.

"There was a commotion so –"

I cursed. "Ghost. He wasn't supposed to come so fast. Is Varia here?"

"Mukuro too."

A shot rang out, and Belle had to retreat before acknowledging the conversation. Her eyes flickered to us, the clearing, and after confirming Tsuna really wasn't here she lit up her boots and flew up, her trident twirling.

"Yuni will be ours anyway. You cannot stop the Trinisette from resounding with each other."

"I believe in Tsuna."

Belle's happy face didn't change. "But you're wondering, aren't you? If I've changed enough things?"

I nodded. "The butterfly effect. One thing changes to affect the whole. In battle, even one second is crucial." I didn't take my eyes off Belle, but I gripped my one remaining chopstick tightly, my hands grimy and sticky and disgusting but _first_. "Reborn, take Yuni to a safer place."

There was no answer, but I suddenly saw an absence of white in my peripheral vision.

"Good." Belle grimaced, shaking her head a little.

"It changes nothing."

"It changes everything."

Belle gave me a hard smile. "Why can't you just give up?"

"The same reason as you."

"You're at your limit."

In reply, I pressed down on my stomach wound. Blood.

"Yes."

_But so are you_ went unsaid.

As Belle dived, I saw a flicker of purple from the forest.

* * *

_The not-so-herbivore came in, and everyone was glad to see him, as they, _he_ was powerless to stop their strength from being sucked away. Hibari was annoyed at this – he could only stand there as someone apparently drained his strength?_

_As if he would stand for that. He was not an herbivore._

_He was about to take a step forward, bring that glowing cocky bastard down when the not-so-herbivore flew in front of him. His eyes were determined but worried. He narrowed his eyes._

_That type of hair had to be breaking Nami-chu rules. _

"_Hibari, you're the only one I can trust this to," Tsuna said hurriedly. "Please go back. Alice needs help."_

_Hibari raised an eyebrow. Sunglasses? She needed no help, though admittedly she was better at retreat than attack. Priorities. Right now the not-so-herbivore was standing between him and the green bastard –_

"_The baby," he muttered, trying to side-step him. He'll point out his hair a little later when he'd beat the glowing herbivore down – _

"_Reborn is protecting Yuni. I'm needed here – the opponent is strong," Tsuna's eyes flickered towards the trees, "and you want to fight strong people right?"_

_Hibari gave no reply. Then he gave an 'hn' and turned around. "I'm not listening to you because you're—"_

_He got cut off by a short and sincere reply. _

"_Thank you."_

_Then Tsuna flew away. Hibari started running back towards where he had mentioned. The exchange had only lasted for less than eight seconds. _

_Hibari had already found a grudging respect towards what was commonly thought to be the weakest most useless boy in Nami-chu. He was an herbivore until his eyes glowed – sunglasses had pointed it out after the fight with the boss monkey who tried to vandalise the school. He had protected the school, and therefore, deserves respect and some challenges to fight some later time… _

_After this his debt would be repaid._

_As__ the forest flashed by__,__ he asked himself a question __yet again__. _

_Why was he crowding with them?_

_It did not matter. He was Hibari Kyoya. He listened to no-one. He only owed a favour to the..._

_He reached the empty clearing, and his ring burst into purple flame. He took in the battlefield all at once – empty clearing threat in the sky advantage not with box weapon Sunglasses bleeding and _accepting the situation?

_She was accepting defeat?_

_He ran, fury and annoyance powering his every step and he gave a strong swing to the side as he leapt onto a Roll and jumped to aim at the diving woman that was aiming for Sunglasses._

_She dodged in mid-air. And no matter the fury… he couldn't help but smirk._

_Strong._

_Then he looked backwards, annoyance flooding him again at the burning yellow eyes that reminded him of Hibird sometimes –_

* * *

"I don't misjudge people," he said to me, staring right back into my eyes. Belle was too far away to attack for now. "You are not an herbivore. Get up."

I didn't get up.

"How do you know I'm not an herbivore?" Hibari frowned in annoyance. He was about to reply when I put on a fake smile. From how his face froze, I figured he found it annoying.

"I am human. Learn that Hibari. Humans are omnivores. We are weak and strong."

I smiled when Hibari only turned around to counter Belle's trident with a flaming tonfa.

No reply. As expected.

But then, that was one of the best reactions I had gotten from him already. I yawned.

Sigh.

Now that the adrenaline rush was draining away I realised that I hadn't really gotten my share of sleep lately. But this was no time to be sleepy – no matter how strong Hibari was, I thought to myself as I hauled myself up, Belle had a heck tonne of experience.

I couldn't really expect her to go easy on _him_ now, right?

Really, what happened next shouldn't really have surprised me. Fights actually go a lot faster in real life, after all.

The next few seconds after getting up -

_BAM! _ Belle struck down with all her strength down at Hibari's strengthened tonfas and Hibari gritted his teeth as he held up both his arms to defend. Hibari bent his knees to absorb the shock and then jumped up, trying to attack when Belle's arms were still up—

—a bright orange glow lit up the sky from the direction Hibari had ran back from, and a huge orange circle cleared the forest tops and a moment later, a smaller one resounded and rose up nearer to us, a small figure in the middle looking down and yelling frantically to something underneath her—

—Belle saw this, let Hibari hit her in the stomach (_Oww. That must hurt) _and used the momentum to propel her into the trees where she took a second to breathe in and got up. And ran away.

Hibari then got angry and ran after her.

The Yuni bubble joined with the other two peaking up from the trees.

I was left standing there.

I blinked.

What just happened?

Blinking a little blurriness from my eyes, I scratched my head. Yuni bubble.

Right.

…

_Right!_

Yuni!

I followed the two of them in the direction where the orange bubble glowing, now that Yuni had joined, had become so huge that it easily cleared the canopy… so easy to see.

How did they hide this anyway? I was sure that, in the technology of ten-years later in the future, that they would have global satellite vision all around the world…

Whatever.

I reached the place, and the first back I saw was Yamamoto, surprisingly enough. Then Gokudera, and Gamma, Tsuna inside the bubble and Hibari honing onto Belle who was standing at the orange bubble trying to do _something_.

When I cleared the trees, I saw all of the people. I was the last to arrive.

Watching carefully at how Hibari had drawn Belle away from the bubble to continue his fight–

I blinked in realisation, at the impregnable orange bubble that entrapped them all. Even Belle couldn't reach now. Byakuran had trapped himself from the only help that he could had. No matter how unprepared we were, we had won.

Yes.

I sat down with a flump, Tsuna's silhouette in the bubble flying around frantically even as Byakuran pulled out his wings, fighting each other and near ignoring the small, tiny figure stuck in her ancestor's mess – still and holding pacifiers in her hands. Maybe if I went closer, I could document everything that happened. Watch it close hand. Listen to all the lines that came from fiction to reality. But was there any point?

Yes…

It was nearly over.

Yuni was going to die… was going to be martyr. Byakuran would be obliterated, like all bad guys do. Tsuna, the good guy, would survive with his friends.

And Belle would never go to our paradise. No-one could break in through the barrier. Byakuran would lose here.

She knew it.

How she suddenly slumped. How she had given halfway into the fight with Hibari – just sat down and let him hit her – which I was so glad to see he didn't. He stopped. Hibari had stopped, looked down and walked away muttering something (most likely herbivore) towards Reborn, who hadn't got eyes for us at all. His eyes were all on Yuni. On Tsuna.

We were secondary.

Of course we were.

I had won at last. We had won. But who could be happy afterwards?

The losses were too great.

I closed my eyes, just feeling overall tired, and unhappy. I wanted to get this over with. This, this _future arc_ was just horrible. I half wanted to see Tsuna and the others as characters again. Opening my eyes, I glanced around, noting everyone who had been there… Lambo was on the ground.

Getting up, I walked over to where Lambo had been left, picking him up.

"Oof," I grunted, glancing down at him. "You're becoming heavy. Lose some weight, I'm sure a six year old shouldn't be _thi_s heavy."

Lambo continued sleeping without a care.

I shrugged. Then walked back to my tree, settling Lambo comfortably and closed my eyes again.

I didn't care for the end of the fight.

* * *

When I opened my eyes again, Belle was gone. No-one knew where she went. No-one really cared. As it weren't us 'Trialers' who decided when to meet Bill, I probably wouldn't get a chance to ask what happened when one didn't pass a trial. I could only hope that Hell didn't exist. Because Belle didn't deserve that. No-one really did.

Now, thinking back on it, I felt a little regret. It was strange, I guess, to come back to life from a dream and finding out that in a short few hours things could go so quickly. Yuni and Gamma's clothes were being reverently brought back to the Giglio Nero's hideout by Nosaru and Tazaru.

I had missed the after battle celebrations.

People were laughing and smiling again so very soon. No-one really wanted to face the others, ask about that extra shadow under their eyes, the overly energetic cooking that Kyoko and Haru were delving into (nor mention them rubbing their eyes when there was just that one tiny thing that reminded them of a certain blue-eyed girl…). Tsuna and the others were being determinedly, what can I say, _normal._

I was determined to be as dull as possible.

There was that tiny small chance that with all the events happening one after another that Tsuna, Kyoko and Haru had forgotten all about my chat with Belle. Yuni had died. They were all trying to get over the sense of their own mortality that came with someone dying.

I had gotten over that… a long time ago. Too many years to count.

I gave a brief prayer to God. If Heaven existed, there must be one, right? I prayed to him to give them a good Trial. Hopefully one that went over fast. And for them to have their Trials together.

May they rest in peace.

* * *

"Gah. What type of people wander around everywhere yelling?" I grumbled, walking around the corner to see Ryohei.

"WHAT SHOULD I DO?" Ryohei shouted into the air, his hands in his hair looking very troubled.

"What?" I grouched. "You woke me up!" I glared at him.

Ryohei looked at me and beamed. "Bright! Should I have a word with my, my, my, my—" He gulped for air.

"Your… girlfriend?" I said, taking a wild stab in the dark.

His face exploded with red. Red splotches _everywhere_.

I took one look at him and laughed. Laughed my head off, like there was no tomorrow and forced all my issues to the back of my head like everything else that I have ever regretted or doubted.

Now that was a talent I was exceptionally good at.

"I don't know. Maybe leave her a bunch of _flowers_, you know, _Hana_."

"Flowers! Of course! Females like flowers! I remember Kyoko saying something like that to the EXTREME!" He yelled triumphantly. Then he paused, before having a panicked look on his face again. "But… But, WHAT TYPE OF FLOWERS TO THE EXTREME?"

I grinned.

"Normal ones."

"Normal ones! That doesn't help to the EXTREME!"

I suppressed a laugh as I went past him.

It was fun teasing Ryohei.

Entering the kitchen, I smirked at seeing Gokudera fidgeting.

"Go see Bianchi, Gokudera."

"Freaky eyes! Don't read minds!"

"But I'm not," I drawled out, yawning into my hand.

Gokudera scowled. "Are you making fun of me, Freaky-eyes?"

I only stared back blankly in response, imitating my 'dead fish' expression that Hana found so annoying. He stormed out, and I smirked inside my head. Nothing was as fun as baiting Gokudera.

* * *

_Because life moves on._

_And therefore_

_As a weak human who cannot defy time_

_We have to move on too_

_Don't we?_

_Belle._

_So please forgive me._

_Please forgive me._

* * *

"It's time guys! Did you all say goodbye to your box weapons?"

As everyone busied themselves, I gestured to Reborn. He blinked at me in surprise – I rarely talked to him willingly after all (and who could blame me? Reborn was freaking scary to be around. And you just don't know when Leon would turn into an explosive…)

"Alice," he stated, because sounding unassured would be a blow to that big hitman ego of his.

"Reborn," I stated back, not willing to lose this I-have-more-confidence fight.

We stared at each other for awhile.

I decided to get onto it.

"I'm going to stay here for another few minutes. I shall probably be back—" I looked at Shouichi and Spanner who were reliable right? "But just in case, I'll tell you so Tsuna and the others know where I'll be."

"Why."

"I have something to settle."

I knew I overthought stuff sometimes. I couldn't shove Yuni's face in my little mind box– with that sad smile on that face whenever she looked at me, and strangely I found I didn't want to. Yuni was Yuni. She was one that one never really wants to forget.

And there was one conversation that kept repeating in my mind…

_"Yuni," I said extra extra slowly as sleep began to overtake me. "Why did you say that Hibari missed me? It doesn't make sense."_

Reborn's face was professionally blank. A face should never show real emotions in the underworld. That was why he approved of me and Hibari, I think. He knew that we would (or able to, in Hibari's case) to protect Tsuna from the _other world_, as Tsuna thought it. The dark side of society.

"Has it got something to do with Yuni?"

_Yuni's laugh from a comment before __faded__. The embers of the fire flickered from a breeze and threatened to die or to rise up and burn once again. I shoved another branch onto it._

I looked at him and shrugged dismissively. "Kind of."

He smirked. "Everyone knew she was meddling."

_Then why didn't you stop it_, I asked him silently, but he didn't reply. He only turned around, back to the normalcy of the others, standing before the glowing white machine that Shouichi was rapidly pounding equations into with a futuristic keyboard – to get that timing and place _exactly_ right.

"I will deal with things as they happen." But he glanced up at me from his Fedora. "But you will come back because you're needed."

I smiled.

"It's something personal, but very important. So I'm sorry."

"It's not like you to ask."

I shrugged, remembering future Tsuna's face when the ten year bazooka dropped on him. I probably hadn't apologised to him – because true, it wasn't my personality really to ask or apologise. So just in case… Just in case. This time.

Reborn fully turned and walked into the white light that the device was emitting while I slipped into the shadow surrounding it, careful to not draw attention to myself. As an extra precaution I faced the other way. There was no reason they would notice me if they couldn't notice my eyes. I didn't have to say goodbye to them, so why see their last moments in this future?

I saw a green glow and Tsuna's voice as he said his last goodbyes – excited and happy that he was going home at last. The glow continued until there were bigger shadows covering the area and the older guardians were there again, and taking a peek over my shoulder, all of them were on the floor waking up.

"Welcome home!" Shouichi said, jumping up happily.

Colonello smiled and looked up. "We did shake up the ground a bit, but everything went well!"

"Good," Lal said, looking at Colonello with a troubled look on her face. She was sidling towards the door… Was she going to escape?

But Shouichi burst out first.

"That's great! Good work!" He grinned happily, and Colonello looked beyond him to smile.

"Hey, looks like now that the kids have gone back to the past, these guys have woken up."

Shouichi looked backwards, to see that all the guardians had stood up, stretching awkwardly and looking around. It was Gokudera who said the first thing, and what came out was _totally _expected.

"By the way—"

He got interrupted. "Where's Tsuna?" Yamamoto asked, having officially made my nightmare come true because he was _definitely_ over two metres tall. Screw baseball – he should've become a basketball player.

"Tsuna went up," Shouichi pointed, and I widened my eyes. When?

But then, it made my job easier.

I shifted a little, so that I sat facing them. Yamamoto narrowed his eyes, his hand on his sword's grip thingy, already half drawn looking at me. At his action, all the other guardians arranged themselves around Kyoko and Haru while glaring at…

Innocent little harmless me.

I blinked.

They blinked.

I raised a hand up.

"Yo?"

That incited a reaction.

"ALICE!" They exclaimed in unison, widening their eyes at me. Shouichi looked at me in a type of horror.

"Did I miss you? Did I program something wrong or something?" He quickly flew towards his keyboard thing again and looked at the screen frantically.

I shook my head. "No, no. It's not you. It's just that…" I frowned slightly at them, staring straight at Hibari, who stared back. "I have something to clarify with Hibari."

Everyone, who had come towards me to presumably talk to me (especially the ones who didn't get to last time, Lambo, Basil, Chrome) _froze_. The people at the back froze. Shouichi froze. And even Hibari stopped fiddling at his tie.

I found this really funny.

Raising an eyebrow at their antics (did they have to so obvious?) I looked back at Hibari.

"Hibari, can you come with me?" I stood up slowly, grinning at Lambo and Chrome and Basil, waving a sorry. "Lambo, wipe that dumbstruck look off your face, aren't you fifteen? Don't tell me you still can't handle my eyes, seriously."

"No, Alice-nee—"

I grinned.

"I know it's not true. But still, Hibari, come here?"

To my surprise, Hibari listened to me, and we left the room together. I walked upstairs, wanting the safety of the forest, where there were likely to be less security cameras and lots of escape routes.

I had to check something. Because of that damn sentence.

_"Why, Alice-nee,"_ Yuni's voice echoed over and over in my brain,_ "It's because he loved you."_

Just because Yuni thought so didn't mean it was right. I set my face, determined to prove her wrong. Because it couldn't happen. Shouldn't happen.

Hibari deserved better than a person already half in the grave.

* * *

"_Hahaha!" Ryohei laughed rambunctiously. "Hibari actually listened to Alice saying come here! He doesn't listen to anybody!"_

"_Only Alice wouldn't be ruined for life after asking Hibari to go to them. Usually everyone goes to him."_

_Gokudera scowled. "I still don't like how Juudaime went to Hibari instead of me about the plan."_

_Basil shrugged. "It's logical, Gokudera-dono." Gokudera scowled deeper. He knew that, damn it._

_Kyoko looked at the doorway worriedly. "But shouldn't we stop them?"_

_I-pin bounded back from the doorway where she had been looking at the two walking down the corridor, Hibari unnaturally stiff-backed, and Alice treading along as slowly as usual._

"_Why? I think Hibari-san and Alice-nee should get everything sorted!"_

_(For after all, Hibari and Tsuna's relationship with Alice before she died was a complicated affair, and was also the worst kept secret in the mafia world… Mafia bosses were just old ladies in need of gossip after all)_

"_No, it's just…" Kyoko shook her head. "Tsu-kun's up there too."_

_Then the 'oh shit' face flashed over everyone's faces._

* * *

The trees rustled over Tsuna's head, as the journal that held his past slowly became blank. He smiled, realising that yes, the past had changed.

Now he knew that their future didn't get passed on to his younger self.

He was glad.

Just as he was about to head back inside, a rustle that his Hyper Intuition told him wasn't from an animal came from the left. He looked sideways curiously, drawing gloves over his hands and walking silently towards the noise.

He looked through.

He barely suppressed the strangled gasp that tried to make its way through his throat.

_Alice!_

She was there… whole, alive, moving.

She stopped, and turned around. There was another person there. Tsuna pried away a few leaves, careful to make it look natural. Who he saw didn't surprise him.

Hibari.

"Yuni told me something I don't believe is true." Silence. The trees rustled, a lone cloud in the sky slowly moving across the sky hanging low, ready to lighten its load with tears of rain—

"She told me that you loved the future me. Is that true?"

Silence.

The cloud reached the sun, casting a shadow slowly, drawing its veil across the field.

Tsuna understood. Hibari… would never be able to lie to Alice. Not after so many years.

Years of emotion that even Reborn hadn't predicted. Love was a shackle that some bore willingly, some fought to get off, and some who accepted and bore together. So that the side not lifted by yourself is lifted by the one you loved, so the shackle ceased to become a chain but a bond of mutual respect and strength. The true shackle of love… was what Hibari had held tightly to his heart for so many years.

It was quiet.

Then a whisper of sound, an answer that everyone, except the only person that mattered, knew.

"_Yes."_

* * *

**Yo guys!**

**I know.**

**Three weeks. But hey, my test weeks are right tomorrow. Yes, my English test is tomorrow. Then my musicology is Tuesday, my Economics Wednesday, and so on. It's horrible. So I took time from studying to type this up! I'm glad that future arc is over. Now I can get to the juicy stuff. Like… who was the guy that introduced Tsuna to Mukuro and the others? MUAHAHAHA**

**I have recently realised I was subject to plagiarism. No, I'm not offended, though it's on another site. I searched up My Heavenly Judgement one day on Google because I was really lazy one day and found a story that copy and pasted lines, changed the name and kind of… yeah. I know you read this story, so can you put it down? Thank you!**

**Apart from that, thank you reviewers! I lub you! I got a really pleasant surprise when a person decided to review every chapter. **YAYfanfics101 **thank you! ****All reviewers make my economic filled days filled with light and joy! (and no, the image isn't drawn by me, it's a fanart! Go to my profile, and it's there! XD)**

**So I wish you all the best of luck and good days as well. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!**


	51. My heart away

I was surprisingly calm about all this.

Really, I kind of expected myself to freak out, flee to the nearest wall, bash my head against it while repeatedly muttering to myself that _ohmygosh, THE Hibari did not just confess something herbivorish_.

Because hey, Love was very much a herbivorish subject last time I saw him… which was only a few minutes ago, standing at the side bored out of his mind while stroking Hibird. But then, he obviously was ten years younger than this Hibari and something happened in the next three years? So three years and something happened to let it become…

This predicament. Which raised the pressing question of _how_ I melted Hibari-the-asexual-iceblock in the first place.

Yes, I was surprisingly calm about all this.

Maybe Grey's therapeutic lessons for me did help. What was the first step again?

Oh yes.

Remember to breathe.

My lungs choked back to life, trying to get some clogged spit out of my airway while staring at Hibari disbelievingly. What was the chance of that happening? Saying _yes? _What – I thought it was maybe, you know, _a highly likely _ZERO percent.

As I stood there choking my lungs out, Hibari just stood there. He wasn't the battle-hungry, crashing through twenty-seven highly reinforced Millefiore walls without breaking a sweat Hibari right now. He was just kind of staring at me blankly, and surprisingly (yes, I was actually surprised I could still be surprised), I couldn't read what was behind it.

Getting my breathing back to normal, I stared at him. Narrowed my eyes. Tried to read his expression.

He faced my look head on. I smirked a little inside – the Hibari I knew was still in there.

A little regret. Okay, a heck tonne lot of regret, and a lot of _other_ emotions I couldn't identify. Sadness? Not as much as the regret. And this strange emotion that was a mixture of anger (at… himself?), frustration, happiness, bitterness, nostalgia, yearning and _tiredness_.

He was tired. Very very tired.

Second step in Grey's tutorial—I really couldn't remember right now.

Okay, make one up.

So let's force my brain to catch up on what just happened. I asked my fateful question and Hibari said yes.

…he said yes.

_Yes_?

My brain promptly shut down again.

After another minute, my brain whirred slowly back up. What, he was in love with the future me? Was that mentioned in the diaries or anything? I ransacked my memory – no, it wasn't. It hadn't been. So maybe it was one-sided! Hibari fell for me, I felt nothing for him, and therefore I didn't know and didn't write it down…

But that _felt_ wrong.

Somehow I just knew that was a lie. My instincts were all screaming out against that, so it was _probably_ wrong.

Another two options. Hibari didn't realise he loved me until after I died, or maybe he denied it until after I died. Both options explained the regret at least. They both were plausible – Hibari was a bit dense on the emotional side. But what could I say? It wasn't as if I was any better.

Hmm.

I decided my next question.

"Why?"

Truly, why? There wasn't any reason to have liked me at all. Just imagine me standing here – choking on spit and coughing my lungs out, standing there like a surprised gaping fish for what, the last three minutes? How was that even remotely attractive?

I mean, if I was a guy, I would go for Kyoko. Like, you know.

Sparkles are attractive, right?

Hibari, who had been standing very still blinked slowly, kind of like me when I was surprised. He didn't do that before, ten years in the past. He opened his mouth, before grimacing and closing it again. After another few seconds of silence, he answered with something really surprising.

"I don't know."

The honesty threw me off a bit.

'_I don't know?'_

He didn't even know?

I at least remembered Grey's third rule. If it's something you don't like, and it's possible, talk yourself out of it. Or another person. Maybe I couldn't really talk Hibari out of loving me for the past six years, but I could make sure he stopped at least.

"It's been at least six years. Forget about me and move on. A lot more people deserve you than I do, that much I know."

He raised an eyebrow. "Deserve?"

I shrugged. "I mean, you're the head of that Foundation thing, the strongest Vongola Guardian, therefore rich, most likely your influence is international, young, tall, good-looking. I could list a heck lot of things. Aren't girls throwing themselves at you?"

He shrugged, uncommitted. "I don't care for them."

I gulped at what that meant. Something was very seriously wrong. I paused. Then said that thought in my brain. Because if he said freaking _yes_ again I would seriously try to wake up (must be a dream).

"Because you cared for _me_?"

Now it was Hibari who was staring at me, and me looking a bit befuddled (and kind of scared of his answer – please don't let it be _yes_), looked back. "Is it so hard to understand?" He said, a bit frustrated.

"Yes," I said simply. And pinched myself.

_Pain._

Okay, this wasn't a dream. Damn.

Hibari's face grew a little disgruntled, funnily enough. "Why?"

Oh, is it his turn?

I frowned irritably too. "Isn't it obvious? We just…" I waved my hands a little to try to describe it. What was it?

Maybe the fact that he tried to chase me and kill me because of a pair of sunglasses the first time we met? Maybe because I was kind of scared stiff of him sometimes? How he was just a kind of fighting freak that didn't have time for anything else? How I was a freaking Brighteye and therefore exempt from love? That from the first time we met we just _didn't get along?_

How did it become like this anyway? I voiced it.

"How did it become like this anyway?" At Hibari's perplexed expression, I changed the question. "What made you… err, like me?"

Hibari looked a little lost, though somehow he _still_ had that imposing aura of _I'm-stronger-than-you-so-listen-to-me_. Only less. I don't know. He didn't know. _He didn't know_. What the Heaven does he think he was doing? Why fall for _me? _Of all the what, six billion nine hundred and seventy three million, seven hundred and thirty eight thousand, four hundred and thirty three people on this Earth…

Why _me? _

What a wonderful mess. And I could solve this. Right now. Even if I couldn't help the Hibari right now…

Sigh. And the only thing I really wanted right now was my bed to happily collapse on and sleep. Sleep. Ah, sleep. My best friend.

Maybe when I got out of my too-tired state I would officially freak out.

Because oh my god, Hibari just admitted he _liked me_. In _that_ way.

Hibari made a motion to answer my question.

I sighed, putting a hand up. "Wait a minute, sorry. Hibari," I pulled out a notebook. "I'll go chronologically. The first time you actually noticed me without feelings of wanting to bash me up or apathy."

He blinked, but his face was remarkably blank for what must have been hard.

"When I watched your fight with the Varia Star Guardian."

I blinked. "You watched that?"

"Yes."

"_Where?"_

"From the school roof."

I neglected the 'how' since my fight had been in total darkness. Hibari must have found a way somehow. I scribbled it down in the notebook, and looked at it considerably. I couldn't do much about that since it already happened, but I'll note it down. Hibari had already noticed me. Now next…

"First time you realised that you didn't abhor my presence."

"Lying down on the school roof."

Me and Hibari lay down on the school roof a lot anyway. I couldn't pin down _when_ that happened.

"Did it happen beforethis?"

Hibari gave a slight grin at my confused face (what, what the heck was on my face?). Then he gave a logical answer that I felt stupid for not thinking about.

"This never happened."

"True," I conceded as I wrote down 'lying on the roof' and vowed never to lie down on the roof with Hibari again. Just in case.

"First time you realised you liked being in my presence."

"After you took care of Hibird."

Okay. That hadn't happened yet. Although the context wasn't clear and Hibari was hardly saying anything much around it, I just had to avoid taking care of Hibird. Maybe when I needed to care for it, my guilt wouldn't let me _not_ care for it anyway, I would give it to Grey or something. That'd work. Hurdle cleared. Next.

"When you realised that I was a person you cared about."

"When you saved a kitten in the rain."

I stared at him blankly. That seriously did not come out of his mouth. What was this? A shoujo drama featuring a love sick, foolish, useless heroine who saved cats and beamed sunshine at everyone with their pure hearted-ness?

Well, I haven't saved any kittens yet. I'll just have to not save kittens. Maybe refer the kitten to Gokudera or something. I nodded and penned it down.

"When you realised that you…" the L word twisted strangely out of my mouth. Gosh this was awkward, "you _loved_ me."

"When you fell sick."

'Sick'. Ah, that explained many things. If the 'sick' was what I was thinking it referred to, of course. I wrote it down.

"Any complications in the relationship building?"

I was being impartial. The perfect business woman. Yet Hibari still had that melancholic happy bitter smirk that was trained _on my face_. I tried not to be too disturbed.

"When I chose…" Hibari trailed off. I looked on in interest. This point that he was making was the most important – if he did end up liking me, this complication could possibly ruin any relationship that could happen between us. I plan to take advantage of that—

"When I chose my pride over you."

I nodded.

That was totally Hibari like.

…wait a second.

"Why would that cause complications?" I wondered out loud, looking back at his face that seemed totally and utterly strange. Blank. Smirk. Cold eyes that lived in regret. A Hibari I would never hope to understand. Because this Hibari, even if not known to be to others, to me was so very strangely _kind_.

A word I would never associate with Hibari in any circumstance unless to some random cute animal.

So that was how he expressed his love? Kindness? No wonder I never noticed it in the future. But continuing my thought pattern…

"Why? I would expect that you chose pride over me," I said blankly, uncomprehending. At my words, Hibari's face twisted a little before returning back to _blank blank blank_, "So it wouldn't ruin any relationship problems at all because it's on your side and _I'm_ the one receiving it unless…"

My mind got to one conclusion.

"Don't tell me."

My voice was dead pan.

Very dead pan.

"I liked you back."

Silence. Hibari looked away for the first time, refusing to answer my question which was already an answer because Hibari hadn't been lying to me. Willingly complying to my requests (a very frightening fact – I felt like I was a person that could actually ask Hibari to do anything and he would answer, and that's creeping me out because who really would want power over one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the world? Not me, in any case. My _future self_ however seemed to have a different inclination…)

No way.

Dude.

Seriously?

Even in near catatonic state from shock, my body remembered its manners. "Nice meeting you Hibari," I bowed mechanically, "Have a lovely day."

I gave a sunny smile.

And calmly walked away if, by calmly, you would define as 'bolting as if your life depended on it'. But ah, one could imagine sometimes, right?

* * *

_Hibari watched as she ran into the trees, in the direction of the Vongola base. _

_So she was gone again, running away from him. But this time, she was running towards his past. Their past. Maybe it would happen differently this time. He turned his smirk into the sky._

_Then he let go of his herbivorish feelings. Turned his head._

"_You can come out now, Vongola." He narrowed his eyes at the bushes at the edge of the clearing, and waited. Sure enough, three seconds later the soft brown hair peeked out of the top, and Tsuna strode into the clearing. "You were listening," Hibari said to him, his voice holding an edge of annoyance and a slight curiosity._

_Why why why…_

_Tsuna picked up on it immediately and Hibari had to credit him for it. This was why the herbivore was no longer one; he had grown fangs in the past ten years…_

"_Why didn't I interrupt?" Tsuna said, seemingly out of nowhere. He smiled warmly at Hibari. "Why indeed, friend."_

"_I am no friend."_

_Tsuna ignored his words as he continued. "You were swaying her towards your side weren't you?" He looked wistfully into the trees. "I didn't stop you because I wanted you to take the chance to show your emotions. They've been hidden too long." He laughed. "It seems even when Alice's so young she can pry you open. Even after six years."_

_Hibari made no reaction. He hadn't answered the question yet. Because he could still have interfered afterwards. They both knew it._

"_I have Kyoko now," Tsuna said softly. "You have no-one."_

_Hibari's eyes flashed._

"_Is that pity?"_

"_No. It's sympathy." _

_Tsuna's brown eyes stared straight down into Hibari's. "And I know I would still have a chance even if you told her all those details. My past self won't back down so easily," Tsuna smiled. Hibari had to refrain from breaking his perfect blank façade with an irritated scowl. He himself remembered how obtuse he was when he was younger._

_Instead, he fixed his tie. Tsuna hadn't been expecting a reply anyway._

"_I wonder," he mused as he looked up at the sky himself. The cloud had moved past the field now._

"_When did she start to embody happiness?"_

_Hibari grunted, before moving towards the Vongola base himself. Tsuna was left standing there, alone in the field and smiling up at the sky. Yes, he had Kyoko, but somehow._

"_Good luck, past me," Tsuna whispered, grinning at the direction of his base. "Don't think I wouldn't let you have an even playing field. I've learnt some politics after all." He chuckled. "I feel sorry for Alice from what I gave my ten years past self…"_

* * *

I hurtled into the room.

"Shouichi. Past. Now." I demanded.

Shouichi merely looked a bit confused. "Huh?"

"I want to go into the past right now. I just heard some really really strange things. Really strange. I must be hallucinating. Therefore, if I go to past Namimori, I can happily go to sleep in my comfortable bed and forget all this."

Everyone shared looks at each other. I scowled. "What is it?"

"So did Hibari tell you?" I-pin finally ventured to ask. Ha, brave girl of the bunch of the nitwits who didn't tell me that _Hibari liked me? _No wonder he let me train in his Foundation thing, and…

So _that_ was why they gave so many knowing smiles whenever Hibari and I were around.

I scowled at her, frowning and being a total grump. "No. He didn't tell me _anything_. At all. It was auditory hallucinations from sleep-deprivation."

I-pin looked a bit exasperated. Actually, everyone looked at bit exasperated. "Poor Hibari," Lambo whispered to himself, quietly, before looking around wildly around the place. "He didn't hear that right?" He asked I-pin, because everyone knew – pity Hibari and die.

I looked into their faces. It seems like it was a secret everyone knew, apparently.

Suddenly, I remembered my impromptu visit into the future. They had asked me about Hibari, didn't they? And when I answered he was 'scary' everyone shot wry smirks at each other.

Huh. I scowled even harder. Even in my impromptu trip before? How did I never catch it? I groaned. So it was true.

I slumped. "It's true, isn't it?" I asked them in general. "Hibari loves the future me."

Everyone collectively nodded.

I groaned, before looking up. "Hey, where's Jared?" There had been a niggling sense of worry for a while. He sounded like he was doing worse when I ran for it. There was a blank pause, a glance around the room as they communicated silently. I narrowed my eyes. They were trying to hide his condition from me. It was only a second, but—

"He's in the medic room. It's alright – he's going to make a full recovery. He tried to sneak some marshmallows before I left," Bianchi replied smoothly, her smile perfect. I turned my narrowed gaze at her.

"What—"

"Alice, stand a few steps to the right. Yes, you're reading now. In a few seconds…"

I started glowing green. Looking at my glowing fingers, I dropped my hand down and blankly blinked at the people crowded around my figure. A little crowd of older versions of people I knew. I tried to ask Jared's condition but somehow the words twisted into a half-joke to tell them I was fine with them _lying_ to me, and I was glad to see them, even if it was just a little while, to see that they turned out fine too.

"Bye. Care to tell me if there's another person who loved me?" I said part in joke and part in suspicion because of what _Yuni_ said.

Uncomfortable looks on every face.

Darn it.

I warped back into the past before I could ask who it was.

* * *

It was simple. To avoid Hibari, simply hang around Tsuna. He didn't like crowds, and Tsuna had a 'crowd' with him all the time. Therefore, it would be the best for my mission – which is to protect Tsuna – and also avoid Hibari falling in love with me.

Yes. The best solution.

I smiled into my pillow. Yes, home was best.

I slept, deep and hard.

And damn.

There was a dream.

* * *

_Jack glared balefully down at me, twelve again, looking down at me as he reached for my hand. "Alice, why did you leave us? Are you too happy with _them_ that you don't want us anymore?"_

_My hand involuntarily twitched forward to take his hand. "Of course not JK, I love you all, remember?"_

"_Then why don't you think of us anymore?"_

_I blinked. "That's because I was too busy—"_

"_To think of your family?" A new voice, of a three year old Emily as she toddled her way towards me with such an old voice. "I've always been thinking of you, Alice. Of the sister I _never knew_… but you can't even recognise me anymore," and she turned into the ten year old that I had met only briefly. "You didn't recognise me, did you?"_

"_That can't be blamed on me," I said logically. "I haven't seen you in ten years."_

"_And you're working hard to see us again, aren't you?" She said, her voice childish and sweet, the lisp that hadn't disappeared when I had left them appearing again. _

"_Of course."_

_What else had I lived through the seven years for? To go to Heaven, to meet my family, to tell them it was alright, to greet them, catch up on the time, to love them again. It was the aim of all Brighteyes._

"_Then why do you care for those people more than us?" Jack said mulishly, pointing to figures that suddenly appeared out of the shifting grey that covered the whole place. There, Tsuna stood. Then Grey, Nana, Kyoko, Hibari, Hana, Yamamoto, Setsuna, Miwa, Lambo, Gokudera, Ryohei, Chrome, I-pin, a whole sea of people appearing one by one, shimmering into existence. The heads went on._

"_I don't," I said simply. No-one could replace my family._

"_Really?" Jack questioned. _

_I frowned. "Why are you asking me this?"_

"_Because I think you realised too. You're caring too much about them, aren't you? You're forgetting your true family. You don't care for us."_

_Now this was a thing that Jack would never, ever say to me. He loved me making friends. I glared at 'Jack'._

"_Who are you? And why are you here in my dream?"_

"_Just a warning," the voice changed to my dad's, my dad who had been crying to himself in the cold dark corridor of the hospital the last time I truly saw him. His voice was strange; there was none of the warmth, none of the 'because you're daddy's treasure!' tone in his voice. "You shouldn't care too much."_

"_And who are you to tell me this?"_

"_I knew a person like you before. The same look and face, only a bit more… eastern."_

_I frowned. Now didn't that sound familiar. "What happened?"_

"_She died," the voice said in sarcastic glee._

"_Don't hide behind my family. Come out."_

"_But I can't, Alice. You're really too practical for your own good." My father chuckled. "Most Brighteyes break down when they see their previous family accusing them of forgetting them. Of caring for their missions too much."_

"_It's human nature," I replied instead. "I know I care for Tsuna and the others. I know they care for me. I came to terms about it just a few weeks ago."_

"_But if I told you to choose between your first family and your new 'family', which one would you choose?"_

_I scowled at him._

"_A choice I would never have to make. Who are you?"_

"_Don't believe that, Alice. Soul mates meet in a variety of ways. Even after death, you know?" He said, morphing into my Grandmama, smiling gently at me, beckoning me to come over to her with a soft wave of the hand. Her favourite shawl around her shoulders looking as fluffy as the time when I was five and I stuffed my face in it to sniff my grandmama's smell…_

_I stood still._

"_What are you implying?"_

_My Grandmama chuckled. "Nothing, dear Alice."_

"_Don't say that. Don't become my family. Come out."_

"_As if I'll do that. I'm not that stupid__;__ don't underestimate me as just another antagonist__,__ please. I don't give speeches to tell people how to defeat me. _Please_. That's just moronic." My Grandmama turned back into a ten year old Emily. "Why didn't you recognise me?" She whispered, leaning into my face with tears in her eyes. "Don't you miss me?"_

_I stood stiff. "Stop that. Isn't it useless if I know it's you manipulating my memories?"_

_My mother turned around, her face sad. "You left before you grew up. I miss you so much, Alice. Don't you want to see me too? Why are you caring for those other people? I want to see you, how are you? You're doing fine right?"_

"_Stop it."_

"_My darling little treasure!" My dad spun around, apron hanging from his neck and giving me a wink. "Oh, no rebuttal on how you're grown up and I shouldn't call you that anymore? That's not the Alice I know! Cheer up, and don't forget me, okay Alice? You won't forget me, right?"_

"_Stop it."_

_Jack stared at me accusingly. "You left us. You left me to take care of the rest of the family didn't you? You promised me that you wouldn't leave, remember? How could you break it?" He dashed tears from his eyes with a hasty swipe of his hand. "But you just have to meet us again, okay? Don't love those new people more than us, because that's _my_ spot."_

"_Stop it."_

"_I told you Alice," a sly whisper in my ear made my eyes widen and whirl around. Belle stared at me unflinchingly, her memory as fresh as snow, as those gold eyes I only looked at yesterday bore into mine. "If you care too much, then you can't finish your mission. You're doing my mission now aren't you? You killed me; you can't dare to say that you can't finish your mission now. You have a duty to. To tell my parents in Heaven that their dear daughter couldn't make it because of you—"_

"_I didn't kill you," I said to Belle. Then I shook myself. "But you're not her. Why am I talking to you?" I turned back straight again. "Stop it, whoever you are."_

_Instead of a reply, there was a small tug on my pants. I looked down unwillingly and saw a three year old chubby kid. "Why didn't you recognise me, Alice? I looked up to you so much…"_

_I stood straighter and looked straight forward._

_I will not lose._

* * *

Morning broke, and Grey walked into the room.

"Breakfast, Miss."

I stared blankly at him, before getting up and shuffling down the corridor. Grey tutted, before closing the door softly. There was no noise in the apartment. The distant honking of cars, the breeze whistling along the windows – all too removed by the curtains and the windows.

Today was a fine day.

"When you lost your family, Grey," I said as I ate a bit of pancakes, "what did you feel?"

Grey paused in the middle of shining a dish.

"The first, or the second time?"

"The first."

"I couldn't feel much. I was too shocked. Afterwards, it was too late to cry. I had to survive. I knew my parents would want me to live before fully accepting their deaths."

"Did you feel guilty for loving your second family?"

"Sometimes." I looked up at him. "But they were different people, Miss." He smiled down at me, grandfatherly to the end and gave me a tissue. "For every single person, I feel a different type of love. I think of you as my granddaughter. Is this love the same as I love my mother? Of course it's different. So I feel no guilt at all. So cheer up, Miss."

He smiled at me.

I blew my nose.

"Come on, let's go to school."

* * *

**THe trUE ChAiN cALLed lOve – **_**HiBarI KyOYa**_

_Hibari had not realised that love was a chain born both sides. That when one loved, and that the love was mutually bound, one side of the chain was lifted by himself, the other by the person he loved. Because what was love, truly? It was something only herbivores felt, as they needed to rely on another person for strength. _

_But how could those herbivores, when a danger approached their love, fight even a pack of carnivores?_

_It was strange. He had not yet realised that love was something not to be avoided. When he realised he had been similarly chained, he denied it with all the strength he got. He would not be chained down. Be denied freedom._

_She offered it. Her strength. Although it was never said, she was always there, always willing to help (he didn't need help. He didn't need strength. He didn't need _her_, so why wouldn't she go away? Was she similarly chained? No, she wasn't that weak. So he wasn't that weak either. But to take off an invisible, transient shackle was much easier said than done)._

_When he watched her dying, reminding him of a bird that lost its wings, he watched a couple fight together in a war of two verse twenty-seven people. They shared each other's strength._

_After the fight, they laughed at his question. "It's because we didn't want the other to die. We became strong after that."_

_How did they become strong?_

"_Well, if you're talking about love chaining you down, it's more kind of like chaining you to another person." A calm smile that held a gleam of the sword. A swallow perched on his finger, as the man bent down and nuzzled it with his nose. "If you're chained to the other person, and the person loves you back, then aren't you holding two sides of the chain? So therefore you two would lift it together."_

_So it wouldn't be a chain anymore. So it became a bond._

_But the chain on his heart was being held by a bird whose heart was beating slower, and slower…_

_Then her heart turned into dust, and the other side of the chain hit the floor, never to be lifted by another. _

_And Hibari found he couldn't fly as high as before. The chain dragged him down, reminding him of his past failure, reminding him of a certain bird, who could have let him flown higher than ever, shared their strength…_

_Reminding him that he couldn't protect her._

**WhAT iS LOVe? – **_**SaWADa TsuNAYoShi**_

_Tsuna never really accepted love. Love was a thing. It was an object. It was in novels. It was everywhere. It was what he felt for Kyoko-chan. _

_Kyoko-chan never really accepted him. _

_What was love?_

_Was it what Nana felt for Iemitsu? But Tsuna never wanted to become Nana, who waited for his father to come back, who smiled all day but only truly smiled when a short postcard with two lines came up in the post box after an absence of a year to say, 'I'm good in the oil fields,' forgetting his birthday, Christmas, New Years, Parent Teacher, Nana's birthday, their anniversary…_

_What was love? What was it that he wanted?_

_Kyoko-chan was his one and only love, of course. He wanted to marry her. Right._

_Was love what Bianchi felt for Reborn? Reborn had turned back into a tall Hitman. He treated her well, but only when Bianchi had something to give to him, something he wanted. He mainly focused on Tsuna himself. Bianchi was so onemindedly dedicated to Reborn that she didn't think of anyone else. Was love dedicating without reason, to incessantly try and make him angry so he would notice her?_

_But Tsuna did not want to become Bianchi. _

_What was love then? If all these adults, so much older, so much more experienced and wiser than him had those types of love that he didn't want to define as 'love', what was love?_

_He kind of wanted love to be what he felt for Alice. That when she was happy__,__ he was happy. When she was angry, then he would want to comfort her and calm her down. If she was sad, find the person who made her so and glare at them (Gokudera would do the rest). If she said something, he laughed. When they talked, that it went on forever and ever and still have time to talk about something else, all the while wishing there was _more_ time. Laughing when she said the same, wanting to spend a bit more time, eating ice cream, glaring at the faulty air conditioner…_

_But then, that wasn't love._

_Love was what he felt for Kyoko-chan._

_Kyoko was everything a guy would want. Everyone said so. Alice was what everyone aspired to be. Kyoko was what everyone wanted, a guy's fantasy. He grew up with everyone saying that. Everyone loved her._

_So he loved her too. He knew it was love. Everyone said so._

_Whatever he wished wasn't important. He was always wrong anyway, what's one more?_

_But sometimes, he wished._

_Sometimes…_

_And then he was looking at a grave, sunflowers and the harsh bright sun on the plain that she __**loved**__…_

_(what was love really?)_

* * *

**Hi people!**

**This is colbub's sister. Because colbub has fallen asleep with a 'Upload it for me. Type my author's note for me. Don't change anything! Just add commas or something' at me so here I am...? :O**

**Anyways, hopefully I haven't missed any major grammar mistakes in this chappie. Or earlier chappies. Most of the time I just add commas/apostrophes/regulate tenses. I don't do anything else :P ****If there are, feel free to let colbub know and she'll let me know hahahaha**

******Oh yes! Before I forget, colbub had stuff to say to you all:**

******1. Sorry for being late by a week! I've had exams and stuff -insert typical colbub exam rant here-. Sorry!**

******2. Tsuna's love thing was included because a lot of people have been asking why Tsuna was so oblivious to his feelings, since he's supposed to be wayyy more in touch with his feelings than Hibari. Hence the second bit. (Personally, I think the way colbub's treating Hibari/Tsuna's feelings is really well done :O better than other OC fics about ooh Hibari falls for me because I'm so aloof and cool! Or ooh Tsuna's so in love with me because I'm just so much better than Kyoko! or ooh Hibari loves me because I'm so different and have really good fighting skills but am yet so innocent! Or whatever... and I really like the love-as-a-chain-that-lifts-both-people-up idea~~ and I'll stop the bracket talk now because it's getting super long )**

******And I think that's it... if there was more... ah well. It couldn't have been that important anyway :D**

**So yeah. colbub'll be back next time!**

**Thank you for reading my ramblings XD**

**colbub's sister**


	52. And place another

"_Hibari-san?" Kusakabe asked in worry as Hibari, who had recently come back from who-knows-where to settle back in school right away, opened his eyes wide as he sat straight in his director's chair in the reception room of Nami-chu._

_Hibari put a hand to his head, frowning. A little tremor of a small earthquake shivered through the room, very small indeed, but Hibari wasn't paying attention. Images were going through his brain, from a point of view that was his, but not his all the same but somehow… why the nostalgia?_

_He stood up abruptly, and all the Nami-chu disciplinary committee stood up with their president. But Hibari paid them no heed and stared out the window in confusion as images of the people he knew, but somehow _older_ flashed through his mind image after perfect image (and one girl seemed to pop out more than others)__—_

_What... were these memories?_

* * *

Nami-chu was the same as ever. Walk in the school, fanboys? Check. Random Sakura trees? Check. Hibari and his goons glaring at everyone daring any one of them to become late (or break the rules, or piss Hibari off, or… yeah) with pompadours making everyone shudder away? Check.

Random boy looking at the Disciplinary Committee in awe? Check as well. I see a future pompadour developing…

I walked through, seeing the beautiful school absolutely clean (no littering allowed, obviously), and well, it wasn't really beautiful. Maybe I was biased.

Peace. After a few months of _tension tension tension_ and _impending war war WAR! _And Tsuna being emo, Yamamoto brooding over his dad dying, Gokudera trying to… yeah, all that stress.

I carefully skirted Hibari, and wondered at _why_ his eyes followed me. I didn't wear my sunglasses today, so what's the big deal?

Shrugging it off my mind, I looked at the school again, as I approached closer. Normality.

Well, to say the truth, it didn't seem real.

Clearing out my locker and carefully storing the presents, changing shoes, going into class, sitting in my seat… I sighed, whether in happiness or boredom I didn't really know.

"Alice!" Kyoko's bright voice called, walking arm in arm into the classroom with Hana. "Today's a lovely day!"

I smiled back.

"Yes it is."

* * *

It was school – from the reports from Nezu, the Shimon students had already started dispersing to other schools – after all, Enma wasn't the only one who was wary of the Shimon area after the earthquake. Apparently, it was quite a great one – and when I came back, there was another aftershock that was nearly just as bad.

Some were going to Midori, which reminded me of Setsuna and Miwa… but then, since we haven't talked for so long, maybe they didn't want to be friends with me anymore?

I would feel awkward. I was always kind of an awkward person anyway, but after so long I felt like I had no right to barge into their perfect, pure world. I had kind of stopped going to Miwa's house too, after claiming it to be tradition and everything.

So basically I felt guilty. And friends just drift apart anyway, so why was I getting bothered over it?

I got out my phone, screen blinking on, resting my head on my arm, looking at the classroom horizontally… my phone's screen flickered to my contacts list. I gave a slight smile inside. There were so many names now.

_Dino, Tsuna, Gokudera, Yamamoto, Setsuna, Miwa, Kyoko, Hana, Haru, Grey, Ryohei, Liza, Yoshikuni, Bianchi… _I even had _Hibari's_.

Maybe I never would have two-hundred names on my contacts list but I was happy with this number. They were my friends, you know?

I flicked it shut, before sliding it into my pants pocket again. Then I switched sides, instead of crushing my left ear to my arm, I crushed my right and peered out the window. It was a good day. Sunny, warm…

I gave a slight bitter smile as I let the sun warm me up.

Friends drift apart, huh?

* * *

"Alice, its lunch!" Tsuna's voice fuzzily punctured my dark dreamscape, where there were leaves blowing, and a voice asking me _why, why?_

I blinked my eyes sleepily; looking straight into Tsuna's face, and gave a small smile at his smile. "What, Tsuna?" I asked, not bothering to move my arm from underneath my head, for somehow my head had switched from looking at the window to facing the classroom. Somehow.

Tsuna blushed a little, before abruptly pulling back.

"I just wanted to know if you wanted to eat lunch with us," he fidgeted a little, moving a little back towards his seat. I blinked at him, and stared at his small school standard desk, already crowded with Gokudera sitting at the right hand side of Tsuna's seat, and Yamamoto dragging a random person's seat to sit directly across Tsuna. Tsuna took a few steps more, sliding into his seat and looking backwards at me. Their knees were all bumping each other's under the table, it was _that_ cramped.

And for some reason, no matter how crowded that table was, that fourth side of the table seemed bare without me.

So I shrugged, brushing my hair from my face as I stood up. And with my blank face plastered firmly on, I rifled through my bag and took out my lunch box. Walking towards the empty side of the desk (the desk had _four_ sides after all), I dragged a random chair and sat on it.

Gokudera 'tch'ed me, scowling and muttering out a 'took you long enough'. Yamamoto gave his eye-crinkly smile that had been missing for _so long _lately and with that little grin asked me if I needed chopstick lessons again. Fans all around the classroom squealed at the return of the classroom's idols, as we all sat around Tsuna yet again. The centre of the world.

With my back warmed by the sun, my silhouette stretched across the small piece of wood called 'Tsuna's desk', seeing the warm light giving everything else dimension and _colour_… Gokudera fussing over Tsuna, Yamamoto watching content and munching sushi, I grumbling about how hard it was to use chopsticks, and Tsuna just watching us all with those warm brown eyes that screamed louder than anything he could have voiced

_I'm so happy we're back again_

With the companionship that could be born by sharing hardships together, from overcoming them, from sticking together, and the knowledge that we all cared for each other, we ate lunch at school. Tsuna laughing at my little sarcastic comments, Gokudera glaring at the world except for Tsuna, Yamamoto smiling that silly little grin that didn't seem to leave his face…

"_How could you replace me, sister?"_

I was happy.

"_You didn't recognise me…"_

I blanked at Yamamoto trying to teach my how to use chopsticks yet again, nodding at how he was doing these weird 'whoosh whoosh!' sounds. Gokudera just snapped at him, before slapping a three dimensional graph of how the muscles in the hand should work in order to use chopsticks on the table, only to upset Tsuna's lunch… leading to a huge apology session, and Tsuna getting flustered.

Cue amused eyebrow quirk.

"_You have a duty now, don't you, Alice?" Gold eyes gleamed, her hands snaking forward…_

Flicking a little rice on Tsuna's nose, Gokudera turned to me in irate anger instead.

I fought hard to suppress my smirk at how angry Gokudera looked.

Tsuna grinned at me before trying to get up and tripping over his shoelaces. Then he fell backwards, with Gokudera trying to dive under him, kicking the table in the process and upsetting Yamamoto's sushi into his face, and I sat back trying hard not to cackle and creep my peers out even further.

It was a nice day.

The teacher came in after lunch, and he smiled at us.

"You all know about the earthquake, right? Well, there were some students afraid of earthquakes hitting their area again, and got admitted into our school." Murmurs erupted everywhere in the classroom. The teacher just smiled at us – he was an nice teacher. "Yup, and one of the transfer students is going to come into our class."

"I wonder if it's going to be a hot girl!" One of the idiots said somewhere in front of me.

Hormonal teenagers. I scowled, and looked at sensei.

At least I get the satisfaction of knowing that it was Enma instead of Adelheid coming into our class. Imagine Enma as a hot girl…

Heh.

"They'll be coming within a few days, so welcome them and show the Namimori school pride, okay?"

"Yes, teacher!" The whole class chorused together like primary schoolers. The teacher grinned, before turning around and writing on the board.

"Now let's get back to class. Who can answer this question?"

I glanced at it, before dropping my head very enthusiastically into my arms.

Advanced algebra. Fun.

* * *

"_Who are you?" I yelled into the dark grey fog of the place, my voice reaching in deeper and deeper and never returning an echo. There was nothing to bounce off. I was alone._

_Marching forward and determined to get out of the starkness of the place, the emptiness of the light grey…_

_They did say solitary confinement was one of the worst torture methods for mankind… A rustle from the ground alerted me to something other than me, and I suddenly wished I was alone again. Anything, anything other than this. _

"_Alice…" A whisper from the ground made me stare straight forward. "Alice, Alice…" it turned into a whimper, and I couldn't take it anymore and glanced down to see Jack and Tsuna, an arrow through Tsuna's heart and a dagger in the stomach for Jack._

_Jack was the one moaning. My eyes widened as he dragged himself towards me. Then I stared at Tsuna, and I was relieved to see that he was still breathing. Barely, but breathing._

"_You can only save one of us, Alice," Jack's voice dropped into a whisper. His breathing became ragged. I stared at them both, nearly going into… then I snapped my head up, and kept on marching forward and leaving the bodies behind._

"_You're not real."_

"_But we're real, Alice…" came the reply, and there was a wet, clogged cough before a last shuddering breath sounded, and all became still._

"Because you didn't choose, they died, Alice."

_That matter-of-face voice… I whirled around, and saw two corpses and no-one there. I screamed._

"_COME OUT NOW, BASTARD!"_

_No-one answered._

_I mentally apologised for saying a bad word to Grey, and kept on marching away from the bodies. It wasn't much later until the next voice called out to me._

"_Alice, save me…"_

_I wanted to scream again._

* * *

"Alice, are you okay?" Tsuna's concerned face dropped into my vision once again. Only yesterday did Kyoko did something similar. I 'umphed' out a reply and turned my head towards the desk.

"I haven't been sleeping well. These few nights I have had some nightmares. Don't worry about it," I said, picking up my head that seemed so heavy these days. And here I was, thinking that maybe when I came back to the past I would be able to get some decent sleep.

When I get that bastard who was showing me these dreams, I would force them into a whole month of all-nighters, just to get revenge. Guh, I needed my sleep! It was a hobby!

"Oh," Tsuna looked a little crestfallen.

At that, I raised my head and quirked an eyebrow. "What is it, Tsuna?"

"It's nothing. It's just that I've been a bit puzzled over a note that I accidentally brought over from the future… that's all." He gave me an uncertain smile. "I thought you might understand it."

I frowned. "Why me? Why not Gokudera?"

Tsuna's face broke out of that permanent unsure-face, and gave a thoughtful look at me.

"It was signed to me, talking about you, but now that I think about it…" Tsuna smiled again, that unsure crease between his eyebrows and the goofy grin back solidly in place. "I want to keep it for myself."

I shook my head, scowling.

"You woke me up from lovely dreamless sleep for _that?"_

Tsuna chuckled sheepishly, still walking backwards until he tripped over a chair leg, falling backwards, and clipping his head on a table – not fully bashing his head on it because I had stood up and got a hold on his arm. I adjusted my balance a bit, before hauling him back from a forty-degree angle from the floor to the correct ninety degrees and stabilised him until he was the blushing, embarrassed, humble (but still strong in a variety of ways) Tsuna that I knew so well.

"Haha," he was saying, scratching the back of his head sheepishly, "I always trip over stuff, I'm sorry…"

And ignoring fanboy glares I gave his hair a ruffle.

"No problem."

I sat back down again, and the hubbub of lunch in the classroom started again.

"The transfers are coming tomorrow right? I think there're seven of them!"

"No, it was eight, wasn't it?"

"Really? I hope so! The more the better right?"

"Yeah, transfers make life more interesting."

A dreamy eyed girl glanced at Gokudera, who just entered the room from successfully snatching melon bread from the cafeteria (which was quite a feat. It was warfare down there).

Seeing Tsuna standing stock still in the middle of the classroom, he grinned happily and waved at Tsuna.

"Juudaime!"

Then he proceeded to switch faces, glaring at anyone who was in the way between him and his beloved Juudaime. He quickly crossed the classroom. "I got a bread for you as well!"

Tsuna broke out of whatever he was doing and smiled gratefully at Gokudera.

"Thank you, Gokudera!"

Gokudera preened.

Then he turned to me, with a little blush on his face, and asked me if I could accompany him to the Disciplinary room because some random people were too scared to give him the sheets he needed before the end of school.

Both Gokudera and I accompanied him this time – Yamamoto was playing baseball with the happiest smile on his face that I've ever seen for months.

We reached the door, and Kusakabe opened them and looked down at us with a smile.

I blinked.

It was so _strange_ to see him without grass between his teeth. My face blanked.

When did he start the habit anyway?

An image of a five year old pompadoured, grass-chewing Kusakabe appeared… I tried very hard not to laugh, just in case I offend some delicate Japanese etiquette that Kusakabe obviously respected.

"Are those for Hibari-san?" Kusakabe asked kindly, looking at the stacks of paper in our hands. Gokudera had the biggest stack _(I have to prove my worth as a right hand man, Juudaime!)_, I had the smallest _(its only gentlemanly of them, and hey, gotta take advantage of girl rights)_ and Tsuna gave a shaky smile.

"Yeah. Please let us in?"

"Of course." He got out of the doorway, and Hibari looked up to see Gokudera move in, and his eyes narrowed until he saw the stack of paper.

"Over there." He said, clipped and distaste evidently showing through at _us_ in his _Reception room_. Gokudera growled.

"I don't take orders from anyone but Juudaime!"

Hibari's eyes narrowed, but Tsuna intervened.

"Gokudera, put them over there, okay? I'm sure Hibari-san has a lot of things to do…"

As he moved from in front of me, I trailed bored eyes all over the room, the last landing on Hibari, who was staring at me with confusion, before putting a hand to his head, staring at me.

…

Okay.

Hibari was totally not staring at me.

I ignored him with my best poker face until he realised he must have had a 'weak' expression on, and his iron mask came over his face. "_Get out," _he growled at me, and I raised an eyebrow with my most innocent 'who me?' face.

He was still staring at me.

"_Get out now."_

I stared at him strangely now, as he looked down at me with cold eyes.

Was I the only one who thought we were getting along a _bit_ better? But at least, I thought as I sighed in relief and handing over the papers to Kusakabe to handle as I happily walked out of the room, _this_ Hibari didn't seem to like me in _that_ way.

What a happy bonus to my life.

* * *

In the boisterous classroom of 2-A, Gokudera was cackling evilly after helping Tsuna do his class chores before class. He cracked his knuckles in anticipation. "Leave it to me, Juudaime! If anyone dares show disrespect to Juudaime, me, the RIGHT HAND MAN will show them who's boss!"

Tsuna's eyes grew in horror – Gokudera hadn't entered violent-yankee mode in a _long_ time.

Gokudera's face then turned absolutely evil. "I can't wait," He said with a type of dark laugh/smirk.

"Don't do that, Gokudera!" Tsuna shrieked.

Yamamoto appeared behind Gokudera, customary sword slung behind his shoulder, and Tsuna looked at him in a type of apprehension (as, of course, this was his family, and they were all crazy – in a way. A good way of course. Cough. He doubted, sometimes…). Yamamoto grinned happily.

"I'm actually kind of looking forward to meeting the transfer students!"

Gokudera turned around with his scowl fixed in place (_how dare the baseball freak steal _his_ Juudaime's attention!")_

"I mean," Yamamoto continued through Tsuna's 'good morning!', "there might be one who likes baseball and wants to join the baseball club, right?"

Gokudera gave a tch, and glanced at him in irritation. "Don't you _ever_ think about anything other than baseball, baseball freak?" Yamamoto glanced down at him and laughed at him in that pure _Yamamoto_ way that didn't induce any annoyance… except in Gokudera.

Gokudera was about to yell at him before another voice cut in.

"I'm looking forward to it too!" Kyoko said, smiling happily at Kyoko and sending out sparkle messages. Tsuna's face was like a volcano – that type of blood rush just _couldn't_ be good for the body.

"Kyo-Kyoko-chan!" He stuttered out, leaning backwards to try and get out of range of her face, smiling idiotically (even I had to admit that).

I was silent, as I nodded at Tsuna and made my way towards my desk. "I'm looking forward to it too," I said truthfully. Tsuna glanced at me, still with that small tinge of blush on his face and gave me a grin too.

"Good morning!" He said brightly. I gave a small smile back.

"You sure have a smug smile stuck to your face," Hana said, strolling in and looking superior. Kyoko looked up at her happily. "_I _hope that they would be mature and not childish." She then eyed Tsuna, implying he was childish and therefore undeserving of Kyoko.

Tsuna took a page from Gokudera and turned his head away while muttering a 'tch'.

The teacher slid open the door, and the tired man smiled at us. "As you know, eight—"

My eyes narrowed, and I ignored everything else he said. Eight… so the rumour was right. There were eight students when there was supposed to be seven. If the plot changed, that could only mean it was Brighteye intervention, from the past or the present.

No doubt it was the kid who had the white eyes. The strange, strange eyes that stopped anything else from being remembered. I gave a slight frown to myself.

I was looking forward to meeting this… person.

"…And three of those students will come to this class. Be courteous, alright?"

I perked up, and drew my tired eyes up, suddenly _not_ so tired anymore.

Three?

"Kozato-kun, Graney-san, and Shit—shito-kun…?" The teacher trailed off in confusion at the hand in front of his face. Then the most _bizarre_ woman I have ever seen walked into my life.

Yes. She was even stranger than the Varia.

I think Lussuria and Shitt. P would get along really well.

"My name is Shitt. P!" She said confidently, her hands on her hips and two weird see through floaties around her shoulders in a body-suit with… stars on it. And gloves. She obviously didn't read through the school regulations for school uniform. Or hair colour. Or the ban of gloves. And lipstick. And _sunglasses._

I cackled evilly in my brain, even as I, as elegantly as I could, steepled my fingers together and looked neutral.

Hibari had another target to pick on for sunglasses now!

I grinned (in a totally innocent way, of course).

"My talent is," she continued, "HAKKO!"

Yamada in the class mumbled in confusion, "Hakko!" (which meant eight).

"Hakko!" Some science otakus in the class mumbled (which meant radiation).

Gokudera said, "Hakko?!" (meaning fermentation. I was such a mind reader.)

"My favourite food is PI-PU, PU, PU, PIIII, PIIPU, PUU…" and her message ended with a strange 'click' sound that shook the class to the bones. People were all just _staring _at her, and one boy dared to ask a question vaguely directed to the teacher…

"It could be French…?"

Gokudera widened his eyes. "A signal…? She's… NOT HUMAN!" And at that, Gokudera put on his glasses and stared at the girl, inciting jealousy from the many girls that were seated around him. "Holy cow," he muttered, staring at her and obviously thinking that she was an Unidentified Mysterious Animal.

I wanted to chuckle at his thoughts, as he was starting to scribble in his notebook furiously.

Enma was standing next to her, quiet and very much in the shadow. No-one really noticed him (Shitt P just kind of… stood out a bit too much. Kind of like the ugly rich people in parties, you know? They just stuck out to you in the face until the erased all the normal people…)

"Shitt-kun…" The teacher tried to retain his smile, "very well… Er, next up is you…"

There was an expectant pause as everyone looked at the small redhead, who looked beaten up, bullied, and very much like…

I felt a pang of nostalgia and sudden care towards Enma.

He looked just like Tsuna only a year ago.

"…I'm Kozato… Enma…" he said barely over a whisper.

The teacher was a bit of a jerk. He made fun of people when he lost the attention of the class to a student, picking on the weaker ones (like Tsuna) when he got staged up, most often by me or Gokudera. I personally didn't like him at all. I liked him even less as he started picking on Enma from the 'lack of respect' from Shitt. P.

"Mm?" The teacher said, holding a hand to his ear. "Couldn't hear you there."

Another pause, and the class was a bit sympathetic to Enma, I think.

"Kozato… Enma," Enma tried again, looking down at his feet. There wasn't much of a different in volume.

"Speak up!" The teacher raised his voice. "Once more!"

But Enma only stood there, his whole countenance just exuding gloom and some boys and girls in the class broke into smirks. "So gloomy," they muttered to each other. Most of the class stayed silent, while Hana stared at him and (I think) recognised the former Tsuna in Enma as well.

"He's the type to get bullied a lot," Hana said quietly.

The third transfer student spoke up then, his voice pleasant and gentlemanly.

My eyes focused on him, surprised.

For some reason, even though I had been so focused on trying to pinpoint this third student… Graney, was it? This Graney, but I didn't realise he was here at all.

Or more exactly…

I glared at this boy, clean cut, pale eyes, perfect school uniform and the hair slicked back. He had blonde hair, white eyes (or pale. For he could obviously still see…) and pale skin like mine. But my skin was unnaturally pale (it was near impossible to get skin as white as mine, but there was a Brighteye theory behind it, so it was understandable for me. But for _him…)_

I noted them down. Blonde hair, name Graney.

"My name is Graney Wend, but just call me Wend!" He smiled. "But you'll all forget about me anyway, so it's okay. Let me sit behind the pretty yellow-eyed girl, please teacher?"

Fanboys glared, and I scribbled his exact words down onto my notebook. Everything counts.

"But there aren't any seats behind Bright," he said, the teacher looking slightly befuddled, before nodding. "Alright, there isn't any harm."

The three students seated themselves accordingly, and I kept my eyes on Wend.

He smiled at me, before dragging a chair and a desk from the corridor and sitting behind me. I felt uncomfortable, but I went through the lesson relatively calmly.

At the end of the lesson, it was only when chairs starting scraping on the floor that I realised I had actually _forgotten_ that he had sit behind me.

…What was that?

I raced home, knowing (for some _unknown _reason that Tsuna and Enma would be safe. I had to trust my gut instinct this time. I had stuff to search up.)

"Miss, want some hot chocolate?"

"Yes please," I said to Grey, giving him a nod and shoving off my bag and slinging it onto the couch. I went straight to the computer room, gave a sneeze at the dust (it wasn't my fault it wasn't clean. Grey wasn't allowed to clean this area anyway, so it was _always _a bit dustier than everywhere else…)

I booted up the computer, put the four security passwords in, logged onto the server, answered the secret questions, accessed the network and searched up.

_[Wend Graney]_

_four articles found. _

The mechanical tinny voice of the little mascot on the corner of my screen waved a chubby hand at the four articles before poofing away, and I looked at each one, and their summaries, before clicking the first one.

What I found made my mouth drop.

_What._

_The._

_Heck?_

* * *

**Now peoples! Hey! Yeah, three weeks!**

**Don't worry. I will never drop this story, or any of my stories. But hey, any of you remember who Wend is? If there is no-one, I won't be giving any clues. If there is someone, submit a review and try remember! You re-readers will sure get it.**

**MUAHAHAHA, I've been foreshadowing this for SUCH A LONG TIME!**

**See you in a few weeks time! (hopefully!) XD**


	53. living heart in my chest

Wend Graney was in fact, a _very important _person in the Brighteye family.

Wend Graney – Number One Brighteye, the first to appear in this world four hundred years ago, the one who established the family in the first place, who was friends with Alayne, assigned to the Shimon family (at least that explained why he was still with the Shimon family but…)

But on that webpage that explained so much, it recorded that he had disappeared about twenty-five years after he had appeared.

I frowned, as I swung back on my swivel chair.

One word.

_Huh?_

Nothing else for it. I pushed my chair backwards, reaching for the phone and dialling the number with one hand, even while staring at the screen in which a face with blazing crimson eyes smiled at me, set in a face that seemed nigglingly familiar. I leaned forward and clicked on the back button, before clicking on the second article.

_{Beep—Yes? This is the Brighteye Network—}_

I cut it off.

"Alice Brighteye, fifty, password: _fireflies like eating cornflakes 2574-capital A-under-j-k-j-o-h-capital H O-87543222-t-s-f-i-v-e for breakfast because of dysentery_," I said. That password lets me talk to Spartan Teacher Number Two immediately because it was an emergency. And hey, it changed every week –

_{Code accepted,}_ a mechanical voice suddenly intercepted instead of the female that had been on just then. _{Level two password please,}_

I sighed, before wracking my brain, and opened a file where I kept the password on my computer. Then I read it out – this one only changed every six months.

"s-I-x-h-j-h-k-k-capitals-F-G-T-E-underscore-bracket-756434144402253679845762-bracket-purpose-S-dot-D-dot-I-dot-F-safety-request-99," I replied.

There was a buzz, and then a different electronic voice answered.

_{Code accepted… Level three code…}_

I scowled in annoyance. _This_ was why I hated to talk to Spartan Teacher.

"Oh shut up," I growled at the receiver. "I know you're listening Spartan Teacher, and you're just making fun of me now."

There was a click, when the machine started saying _{Code not accepted…} _Anise's voice slided into my ear unpleasantly, as the quality was _way_ too clear and it seemed like she was behind me whispering into my ear.

"Or maybe you just forgot the third password?" She asked pointedly and blandly, at me.

I kept my scowl on my face. It always seemed to be fixed that way when I talked to my 'real' family, which, now that I think about it, was the reason why I couldn't seem to smile properly in the first few years of being near Tsuna. Now I could make a decent smile, I do say so myself. I measured my smiles against the Tsuna-meter.

You know, the better the smile, the bigger the blush. It was pretty remarkable too, since if _anyone_ smiled a good smile at Tsuna, those heart-warming fluffy smiles anyone saw knew were genuine, Tsuna would blush. Yamamoto's smiles weren't nearly always so real, but once in awhile Tsuna would blush to a particular smile of his. Gokudera too, and of course, Kyoko. So one day, when I smiled at him (around last year), surprised I didn't have to force it, and Tsuna blushed.

He actually blushed, I chuckled. I remember that day. I smiled, he blushed in shock, I chuckled, he fell over in shock.

Nowadays, I'm just glad he's used to me smiling and laughing once in awhile.

But back to the topic. Scowl firmly in place.

"Teacher, I wanted to ask you something. Who's Wend Graney?"

A significant pause before her voice came back to me, low and quiet.

"How do you know that name?"

"A person appeared in my class with that name."

"Shimon?"

"Yes."

There was the sound of rustling paper, and a few taps on the keyboard as she composed herself. I knew, because those keyboard taps were only the tapping of one key. I was pretty sure it wasn't the backspace either. My teacher knew something.

"Tell me."

And there was silence.

"I think it would be productive if you asked that spirit in that ring of yours. Don't worry, it will work."

Then the line clicked off, and the offline beeps of the tone came over again over the phone. But I wasn't annoyed, putting down the receiver and looking at my ring. It seems like there were answers, and she told me how to get them.

Silently, I called out my Grey flames and stared at them, before forcing them into the ring with the command

_Let me see Alayne._

A few seconds later, a shimmering silver silhouette burst out of my Ring into the dark room, hovering in the middle of the room for a few seconds before turning around with the shimmer dying down into the set soft glow of the grey flame. Then the figure opened her eyes, blinking them in confusion as she tried to find a source, a reason why she could see a dark room with only the dim glow of a computer monitor for light.

From there, of course, it was easy for her eyes to see my own silhouette from in front of the computer screen, yellow eyes challenging Alayne's, staring at her in seriousness. People called me serious most of the time when I was pretty lighthearted. I wonder what they would call me if they saw me now?

I gave a dry smirk, continuing to stare at Alayne's face. She started wearing that smile she always wore when she met me, but I interrupted her.

"Talk about Wend Graney."

And her face froze, a second, maybe less, before she recovered. But she had to be good, legendary even, to have even established the reputation for the Brighteyes. It was to be expected.

"Why?" She asked, her voice and face not matching, her face friendly and open while her voice was cold, emotionless yet pleasant.

_Threatening_

"He exists in my time, and we need information," I said just as pleasantly. "You know how we work." Alayne's face didn't even change, naturally changing from a fake smile to fake concern. "Do not lie," I continued, pinning her with a glare that she wriggled free from easily as she was plain _unintimidated. _

"I know that you are one of the reasons that he is still here," I bluffed.

But it seems that it was correct, as Alayne's face betrayed its first emotion.

She looked at me, inscrutable, before floating down to sit on the floor.

"Is this important?" She asked quietly.

I nodded.

"Then please listen carefully. I will not repeat any of this."

* * *

_Wend woke up, in another world that seemed like it had a human population. He laughed, looking at his hands, seeing chubby little fingers instead of the much longer fingers he was used to. Crawling to a broken mirror that stood in the corner of the little room he was dropped in, he found himself to be eight years old._

_So it wasn't a dream after all. He reached out to his reflection, where a little child with a little too much wisdom in his eyes, a little too much pain that twisted the face into something never entirely innocent, was standing._

_There was no one around him._

_He was dead and in a book. In a freaking BOOK! Hah, and to get to Heaven he had to help this character from his favourite novel. Yet it wasn't so fake wasn't it?_

_He backed away from the mirror, disgusted at his new appearance. His eyes reminded him of fresh blood. He did not need any new memories of blood. He had had enough._

_But he knew. He would reach his little sister in any way he can. He had asked Bill, asked him if Heaven could let him watch over his only family member left back in the world where he had died. Bill said yes. So he had to go to Heaven as fast as possible._

_Twenty five years._

_Wait for me, Elena. Your big brother hasn't abandoned you._

_oOoOo_

_Poverty was so much more common in post-war years. An eight year old scrounging for food on the streets or looking for work wasn't so rare after all. Wend was grateful, as he started picking trash and selling it for some money in which he would go and buy bread. He was eight. His story's protagonist was twelve when it started, the meeting of Giotto and Cozart._

_He had four years._

_It was two months into this new 'life' that his second and third comrades came into the world. Blue eyes and Purple eyes, both unnatural and unnerved him as well as the people who were forced to bear them. He helped them, became a big brother to them. Blue eyes died when he was twenty. Purple eyes died when she was sixteen. They had short missions – delivering a package, stealing a certain artefact so that it could never be found again._

_He helped them with both. Purple eyes – Sarah – reminded him of Elena. Blue eyes – Sean – had a hard look about him, he had suffered through much, but through hard work he won him over too. They were their own little family for awhile, them helping him out with sorting rubbish, now that their missions finished. They only had to survive now._

_They discussed together. What worlds did they come from? Sarah had come from a forest tribe, so she was unfamiliar with all the smoke and litter on stone streets. They were a peaceful people. Sean had come from a militaristic country and his parents had been strong supporters of peace. Death was not capital punishment in that world. If one was caught in crime, Sean said with his voice hard and cold, they dug through the brain to find the people most dear to them._

_Then they captured them without the prisoner knowing. They forced them into a room with a visor, where the prisoner believed their punishment was to fight against two beasts for survival. The beasts would have no weapons. The prisoner would have an automatic gun._

_After gunning them down, they would allow the prisoner to lift their visor. Only then would they realise they had killed their beloved._

_Sean's father had killed his mother before his eyes, before shooting him seven times in the stomach and four in his right shoulder. He had been bleeding heavily, not dead, when his father was allowed to take off his visor. He still remembered that moment, the moment where his father had broken down and gathered both his mother's body and Sean's, still warm, and howled. Begged the people to save his son._

_He had died, seeing his father broken._

_Sarah had been crying for him. Wend only had sympathetic eyes, never pity (pity hurt, never soothed), before giving them both a hug._

_Another week in, three appeared in the room at once. Number four had black eyes, black as night, who's mission was to save and protect a certain character that none pried into. His story had started when the protagonist was eight. He had to set out immediately, but Wend made sure to give him a kiss on the forehead first. _

_He knew, as the first to reach the world, the knowledge that there was no-one there for you was the hardest to bear. He hoped that his feelings that there would always be a group that would welcome him back anytime would reach him. By the little smile that came and went on the little face (yet not, for he had been twenty) it seemed he did. Wend was relieved. And black-eyes – Keven – left._

_Number five closed off on himself, telling only his name and his mission. It was to be finished in two years time. _

_Then he shut himself off, making money by himself, ignoring the others, never talking to them. Wend tried to leave him alone, after telling him that he was always there. His name was Thalmes, and the little he gleaned, he had come from a happy life. He did not accept this as reality._

_He let him be._

_The sixth was Qin Yu Huan, spoke with a light accent and Asian features. Her mission was to support them all, and she had been provided with a language device. She was the only one that successfully brought everyone out of their shells – at least to her – and could talk to any one of them with little difficulty. But she didn't talk much, burning yellow eyes always seemingly set in a frown as she hid her hair and her features (so different to everyone else, so _Asian_, dangerous in times that were still resentful to the Asian states for winning the war)._

_Quickly, she got into the underground network, famous for being easy to get it, hard to keep afloat._

_But she did indeed keep afloat, and Wend could only wonder what she had been when she was alive in the 'past'. She only replied, flicking grey hair over her shoulder underneath the hood she always wore, "no-one special. I was normal," which he never really believed. There was a slickness to her speech and dealings with the underground thugs (which became her playground in only a few months) that never really indicated 'normal'._

_Number seven, number eight, number nine, number ten came in the next four months, one every month. _

_In another two months, Keven came back with his mission, and everyone met one another. Thalmes opened up, slowly, and all ten of them became one family that no-one could ever break apart, Wend being the unanimous leader of them all, and Qin being the second in command. From an outsider's view, Qin was the leader, but everyone looked up to Wend._

_The first, Wend, the leader, the charismatic one that held everyone together, earned everyone's respect in the seven months he had existed on this plane. He cared for each and every one of them._

_The second, Sarah, the youngest but also the most peaceful. She peace-kept, and used her knowledge of plants and living without modern appliances to good use. Grass mats, curtains of woven bark, she was the one that no-one could ever really resist when asked to do something._

_The third, Sean, was silent, and stuck to Sarah like a shadow, and only ever truly listened to Wend. But when anyone was in trouble, he would help. He would differentiate the weaponry classes – if they were being shammed. _

_The fourth, Keven, was a smiley fellow. Bad jokes poured from his mouth, he tried to cheer everyone up (especially Sean, who never smiled, never responded, which just seemed to motivate him all the more). His mission had been to protect a certain object, which he had done already. _

_The fifth, Thalmes, was grouchy all the time. Nothing much was said, except he had an uncanny way with money. He devised a whole new system to count money, all money that came into his hands was at least quadrupled, his sharp eyes always somehow knowing when to push, when to pull back. _

_The sixth, Qin, the support, was the one who provided the family with all its contacts. She gave Sean the weapon's dealers, Thalmes the shadiest money brokers, the nice carpet ladies for Sarah to sell her weaving to. She pulled strings to get stages for Jaquel, food and medicine for Alayne, tea for Aza. She pulled the family together not by personality, but by sheer hard work. _

_The seventh, Jaquel, was a girl of many talents. She had been a performer before. In her previous life, she had been a singer, an acrobat and a dancer. She had dabbled in drama and performance arts. Her mission started seven years later, and so she tried to support her new friends by performing, by singing, by collecting enough money to give to Thalmes, who would give to Qin to get even more resources (money ran the world, after all)._

_The eighth, Azacrabah Jynzkhtre Monerf – name shortened to Aza – had been a philosopher (in which Qin had sighed in disappointment and tried to find another angle for her to earn money off him). He had died at ninety-two, the oldest any of them had been. He smiled, drank tea, and was the most remarkable strategist that anyone had ever seen._

_The ninth, Alayne, had an extensive knowledge on medicine. She knew how to fix anything, and Qin, who was relieved to finally have a person with a little medical knowledge, requested help from her. An irresponsible prankster, her presence finally a brought a bit of _life _into the little room that they had called their own. Before, all had been grieving in their own way. _

_The tenth, Summer, was a sickly child whose mission was to befriend a person in a politician's son in China. But before that happened there was still a good four years until the plot happened. Only Aza predicted that it would be best if Summer was sent to the country _now_, to connect while the protagonist was still a child. So Summer left, nine years old._

_But there had been a whole year before the tenth left, and by then, the first ten Brighteyes were close. Such was the situation of the first ten Brighteyes in the world, in which there was role for everyone. As Aza would say, there is no perfect happiness in the world, but in those days, the ten would say they came pretty close._

_Anyone outside would see a bunch of strange eight year olds._

_Anyone inside the family knew their place, their friends, their trusts, their same goal in 'life'._

_oOoOo_

_Wend had become friends with Cozart, Giotto and even closer friendship with Alayne for two years when he met Elena._

_The Elena that Daemon Spade had met was Wend's little sister from his past life. In his nightmares of blood, tears, and shrieks of his little sister behind him, slung on the shoulder of a trusted vassal who was running away, of him holding up a sword to defend his last family to the death… she was alive._

_They both bonded. Strangely enough, looking up to his sister's face (she was older than him in this world, but it didn't really curb any of the familial _love_ that he felt) he felt calm and peaceful. _

_On Elena's side, she didn't know why she felt so attached, but practically adopted him as a younger brother. _

_Qin was delighted. She had two more rich families to leach from; Elena's and Daemon's. She already established monetarial relationships with Summer's political family, Vongola, some black market stuff, but aristocrats?_

_Ohoho…_

_oOoOo_

"_How could you let her DIE?" Wend screamed at Alayne who could only listen, her face emotionless, blank. Sean was alarmed, holding him back with Keven while Sarah could only look on with wide eyes in the corner, her face in pain as she tried to get up but failing – she had died from an disease of the legs, making her unable to walk._

"_Calm down, Wend!" Jaquel exclaimed, putting a hand on his shoulder in which Wend shook off, as well as pushing Keven away, making him nearly crash into the window and out of it. Sean let go of Wend to dive to save his friend, dragging him to safety. _

_Wend glanced at them before facing Alayne again._

"_You _knew,"_ he whispered. "You knew that this would happen. You knew that she would die. That Elena would die from that attack." His blood red eyes seemed to colour the tears in his eyes red, trickling down his cheeks. _

_Alayne stayed silent, before opening her own eyes to match her stare with Wend._

_Green clashed with red._

"_Wend, calm down. This is not the way to deal with grief and anger," Aza tried to say, stepping in between their glare to calm the situation down. But he was pushed away by no other than Alayne herself, who stepped forward confidently._

"_It was necessary."_

"_NECESSARY?" Wend roared. "A person's death is NECESSARY? You aren't even _human_ anymore! I thought of you as a friend! I told you that Elena was my little sister in my past life! You KNEW HOW IMPORTANT SHE WAS TO ME! As a friend, aren't you at least indebted to save her?"_

"_No."_

_Alayne then fell silent, her eyes boring into Wend's. Her eyes were clear. There was no doubt in her voice, nothing that Wend could take out of her countenance that he could make as an excuse to forgive her._

_Alayne had no regrets at all._

_Wend stared disbelievingly at his best friend, before looking at Qin at the doorway, who had been silent throughout the whole exchange. _

"_You knew too, didn't you? You know everything, of course you know. Why, why didn't you tell me?" Wend's voice broke down. "Why? Didn't any of you see how important she was to me? Didn't you all realise…"_

"_Wend," Sarah said softly, voice placating, pleading._

"_No, don't speak Sarah." Wend's voice was soft. "I want to hear Qin. I want to hear this. Did you know?"_

_Qin's voice, always seeming a bit dry, a bit soft, so familiar, a voice from a person he trusted with his life, his trust, his friendship replied._

"_Yes. I knew."_

_There was silence, as Wend's whole body stiffened. He looked up at the stone faces of his two best friends._

"_Ha," he laughed. "My sister is dead. My two best friends betrayed me. Both my families are broken, isn't that funny?" He laughed, his whole body shaking with laughter as tears continued to drip onto the carpet where they disappeared into dark brown dots, spreading wider and wider… "Did you all know too? Did everyone else know except for me? Was I the only one who felt trust, who thought I was your big brother, thought I was your best friend? It must be, isn't it?"_

_Wend laughed, leaning back, blonde hair shimmering in the sunset. It was near dark now, and the unnatural eyes in the eyes now started glowing in the dark. Only Keven's black eyes didn't glow, instead his eyes seemed to suck all the remaining light in. He looked at all of them._

_He had been there, every single one of them, when they had appeared lost and confused. There to support them, to hug them, to watch the grow up with a strange pride in his body (never mind Aza was a ninety year old geezer. He was still his little brother)._

_His sister was dead._

_His two best friends, who he looked on as sisters, betrayed him. His little brothers were all taking their side. His family was broken. He laughed, hollowly, getting back up and stumbling backwards. His back touched the windowpane which he had thrown Keven at before. _

_Ah, he had hurt one of his own family as well, hadn't he? Sean and Keven looked at him as if they didn't know him. Jaquel was supporting Sarah, who was hobbling towards him… but he could see, he could _see it that they feared him as well, _that they didn't know him as well as they thought they did, yes, maybe that they _sh_oul_d_'t have trusted him as a leader after all. Aza was staring at the situation with fear in his eyes._

_He was scared too._

_Hah._

_His family had broken down around him. Without his family, who would he be? Nothing._

_Nothing._

_There was no point in living. His little sister was dead._

_His friends betrayed him._

_His friends had killed his sister. _

_They knew she would die._

_He had nothing._

_Elena had died._

_His family had broken._

_He closed his eyes, suddenly realising where he was. His lower back was touching the window frame. Through his muggy conscious he could hear Sarah talking, fast, trying to explain something he couldn't hear. Jaquel was next to her, and Keven and Sean had made way for the two girls to hobble across the room, going far away. Sarah and Jaquel were still too far away._

_There was a window behind him. It was open._

_He opened his eyes._

"_I have nothing anymore," he whispered._

_Then he leaned backwards, tilting the world on its axis, defying the laws of physics for a few split seconds, defying the laws of nature – but weren't their very existence a laugh at the laws of nature?_

_His life was a laugh. His purpose was a laugh._

_His family was a laugh._

_The world then plunged down, and the scream of despair from Sarah, the collapse of Sarah falling to the floor as Jaquel dropped her to leap forward to grab of his foot, his hand, his _anything_, as Sean and Keven started lunging for him, too far away (as he calculated), Aza with his ever-knowing eyes widened in shock. Alayne standing there, her face broken away from her mask for the first time in the conversation in dawning _horror_ at what was happening, and Qin running, diving forward, as if she could reach him…_

_That was the scene that he remembered as he closed his eyes. He fell three stories onto cobblestone, head first. It could have been non-fatal. But it was._

_oOoOo_

"_Where am I?" Wend looked around himself, his memory jogged for a room filled with such towering bookshelves before making the connection and looking with widened eyes at the little dwarf in from of him._

"_Wend," Bill said, sounding almost sad. But Angels didn't feel much emotion, he had heard this from Qin who had correspondence with Bill. So Bill wasn't sad, no matter what it sounded like. But his eyes looked mournful. His pompadour even drooped a little._

"_Bill," Wend said, confused. "Am I here to go to Heaven or something?"_

_Only the fireplace crackling with wood responded. _

_Bill didn't know what to say._

"_Wend, you can't go to Heaven. You can't, not anymore."_

_Wend's eyes widened. "Why? Why can't I?"_

_What were all those years of struggling for then…?_

"_You killed, Wend. You killed."_

"_Who?"_

"_Remember."_

_As Bill said so, Wend remembered all of his past life, and his last moments in the world. Then the previous light-heartedness was gone. His family had betrayed him. His sister was dead…_

_He couldn't go to Heaven?_

"_Why? I… I haven't killed anyone!" He exclaimed, rising to his feet, waving his arms. "I hadn't done anything bad in my life there! I need to go to Heaven, to see my parents and watch over my sister… the sister I _was_ able to save," he added bitterly._

"_But you killed. Wend, you killed. You killed yourself," Bill's eyes were still in that sorrow-state. _

"_But only from that alone, you can't go to Hell. You can't be granted eternal banishment either. As you said, you didn't do any major crime, but you killed Wend. You killed."_

_Wend took this in. He felt empty._

"_So what now?"_

"_The only thing I can do for you now is to let you go back to the world you just left. There will be some changes though. You won't be able to die anymore. You'll have to exist in immortality, not as bad as eternal banishment or hell, but still…"_

_Wend's eyes widened._

"_No," he croaked. "No, this can't happen."_

"_It's the best I could do, Wend. It was the only option."_

_And Bill raised on finger, slowly, and Wend could only fade away into despair._

_oOoOo_

"_Qin!" Alayne thundered into the room, alarm written all over her face. "Qin, Wend's body is gone! Its disappeared!" Her green eyes were panicked and angry. "Who dares steal Wend's corpse? Don't they knew who we are? The minute I see this person, I'm going to give him to the Vongola for a long… _talk_." _

_Qin scowled._

"_Don't make assumptions." She looked out to the window, yellow eyes sad. "Calm down. We are all sad for the death of two of our companions."_

"_But Sarah was still there, lying beside the space Wend was. There were some flowers I don't remember anyone placing next to her, but the main fact is Wend is gone!"_

"_Don't panic." Qin's stern words stopped Alayne from walking around the room for the fourth time. "We will find him. He is one of our dearest friends, after all."_

_oOoOo_

"_Are you here to kill me?" _

_Alayne looked up at Wend, whose colourless eyes stared back. She was nearing death now, and she had lived in this small cottage next to a small village for the last two months. No-one would find her here – Qin made sure of that, though once in awhile she heard of the Vongola, and how they were searching so frantically for her…_

_This time it was Alayne's face that was tired, beaten, world-weary. This time, it was Wend standing there looking down with his face blank._

"_No. I'm not the one who kills friends."_

_Alayne shook her head. "I wasn't the one who killed Elena, please believe me..."_

"_Even if you weren't the one who killed Elena," Wend gave a bitter smile. "You were the one who killed me."_

"_I'm sorry, Wend."_

"_There are some things that can never be solved by a simple apology. How we wish it to solve everything. It would never work."_

_Wend left wondering what the point of him going to see her. What had he been hoping for?_

_He watched with empty eyes as Primo finally found the person he loved, a few days late. Alayne had already died, alone, never realising her own love. But Brighteye bodies don't rot, and Primo was able to hug her for a few seconds of happiness before realising that she was dead. That she had been dead for a long time._

_And Primo cried, his Guardians all standing silent behind him, grieving._

_Wend turned away._

_Watching Primo cry over losing one that he loved didn't make him feel as satisfied as he wanted it to feel. _

_He wondered how to get happiness again._

_oOoOo_

_He stuck with the Shimon family after even Aza disappeared. One hundred years later, a man with a spade in his eye reached out a gloved hand._

"_Do you want happiness?"_

_Colourless eyes looked up, a relic of the past. There was nothing for him anymore, not even death. _

_Yes._

_Yes._

"_Yes."_

_He got up and followed._

* * *

Alayne faded away, and I stood up.

Ten minutes later I was in front of Hibari's house. One minute later Hibari was standing there, eyes narrowed at me, speculative, wary gleam in his eye. It was night-time after all.

I wondered what I was doing. But I knew that Hibari did not love me yet. If he did, I could always avoid him later. This was more important, wasn't it?

"What is it?" He said, short and simple.

I looked at him straight in the eye.

"Hibari, I need help."

He stared at me for a few seconds, before going back inside and shutting the door. Just as I was feeling a bit disappointed (and preparing to kick open the door and break in and probably die by tonfa) Hibari stepped out again in uniform, his jacket slung over his shoulders and a sleepy Hibird in his hair. He strode past me and stepped onto the street walking towards Namimori.

He didn't look back.

"We will talk in the Disciplinary Committee's room."

I could be nothing but grateful as I followed.

* * *

It seemed like Hibari had gotten over whatever annoyance he had with me before when he had ordered me to get out of the room. This time he strode over to the desk, opened the curtains to let some moonlight in and sat down with his legs crossed.

I sat down across him, frowning thoughtfully at him.

Would this work?

"Talk," he simply said, relaxed now that he was in his own territory, and therefore, his own terms.

"I need a favour. Can you please cooperate with me?"

Hibari was silent, his own eyes sharp. Oh, Hibari was much more intelligent that many thought he was – and many thought he was a prodigy already.

"We shall see."

And I detailed what I wanted him to do.

Hibari looked at me, frowning. I waited for the worst.

"I will repay my debt. I'll do it." Then he gave a feral grin. "This only means I can beat up that female herbivore even earlier…"

I nodded a thanks, before giving a peace offering of the highest quality Japanese tea leaves and placed it on his table. He looked at it in mild surprise (I could only tell because his eyebrow was raised. Minutely.)

"As thanks. I will also stop wearing my sunglasses now. Thank you, Hibari."

Then he glared at me. For no reason at all.

What? It was just nice manners if you give a present after all. Did I offend some delicate Japanese etiquette that Hibari adheres to and I didn't? Well, I didn't want to find out. With a last bow, I walked out of the room, leaving Hibari to set there with his back to the moon in that dark room.

It was time to solve this problem.

I sighed.

Why did it have to be _me?_

* * *

**Indeed, why always Alice? Alas, she is the heroine, and has to go through many things. Sigh. I feel sorry for Alice...**

**I hope this chapter cleared a lot of misconceptions and explained a lot of things. All bad guys have a purpose in life after all. I did cut some things out - he isn't entirely the victim. Ohoho, no, he isn't. His mission did clash, after all, after awhile. **

**But ah, that is a story for the next few chapters.**

** I hope you all liked this. Please tell me your opinions! Thank you for all your reviews, haha! (my sister is grumpy because I forced her to read this when she was sleepy. But then, if I let her sleep, then you all would have to wait longer! That's no good, now, eh?)**


	54. and leave me with

**Although sad that the manga has finished, now I can go crazy. No seriously. I've been holding back just in case I put some random description that wouldn't fit with future canon. Now I can go and put as much description as I like. You may notice changes, haha... please tell me if you don't like it. **

**Full AN at the bottom! Thank you for all YOUR SUPPORT DAMNIT YOU ARE ALL SAINTS FOR READING THIS FAR INTO THE STORY!**

* * *

That morning, I walked to school with Hibari. It was almost disgustingly scenic. The wind was blowing, the trees were blooming and there was this overall unneeded atmosphere.

Hibari was grumping along as usual with his arms free from his jacket that was flapping very artistically.

Sometimes I think Gokudera and Hibari would get along really well if they just saw eye to eye. They were both such _posers_. There was no other word for it. Why else would Hibari like having annoying coat sleeves flapping from his shoulders?

I sighed, and reviewed my plan.

My plan was simple – Hibari was the disciplinary leader, and his actions were radical _all the time_ so therefore another odd act from him would just get teachers running away from him yet again, which was a normal occurrence sometimes in the year (usually Hibari kept to school rules, and teachers were wary but knew when to run away and when to relax). The principal might have been a good help but he was pretending to be an idiot after all – the principal was shrewd but not smart. Hibari was the best choice.

Adelheid was a problem. Already gaining many male admirers from the school from her big _assets_ (cough choke cough – now those were really big, nearly anatomically impossible), she was gaining a following from the ones who were the worst of the grades, who were not in Kyoko or my fan clubs, the ones who crouched at the back of the toilets reading 'bad' magazines. She was vigilant, she kept Enma's family together, and most of all she had a sense of _justice_. She wanted the Vongola annihilated because they had unjustly killed their families, not from this four hundred year debt.

Wend was entirely different. He had gotten manipulated into thinking that defeating the Vongola would give him happiness – something Alayne had told me. Deep inside he was still feeling the betrayal of his friends. He just wanted the days before his sister died, when his family was still whole, _before_ he had suicided and messed up his mission. Somehow, Daemon had told him that messing up the Vongola would help. Although I didn't know if he cared about the current Shimon family, I knew this. He was all about four hundred years ago.

His sister was another problem – Elena. I assume that he came from a parallel world where Elena had been his sister, so when he came to Katekyo world, to find Elena he would have been so _happy_. But for the plot to continue, Elena had to die, and Wend couldn't accept it.

I had to get Wend out of the picture, _pronto_.

Why? Wend was near undetectable, and he could act freely with the other family members without needing to worry about acting in character like Daemon in Julie's body. He could influence things, change things, and the Shimon family would accept and consider his decisions because they were a tight knit unit. They would not doubt one of their own at all, which is why even when Katou Julie was acting strange, they all just thought it was a phase, that his loyalty ultimately went to Shimon. But it wasn't.

And he was the variable factor. He could _anything_ and I wouldn't know about it.

Didn't know his _skills_, didn't know his _motives_, didn't know _anything_… I couldn't help but want to whine in my head about how unfair it was.

Hey, at least…

Daemon and Wend shared the same interests – of the past of four-hundred years ago. But Daemon should have died years and years ago, and his black flame had sustained him in more ways than one. But, the sack of manga books told me that the black flame sustained itself on hatred and purpose. When he had disappeared, Daemon still wanted to make Vongola strong. Why would he die like that? Even if he had escaped Mukuro's body (which he had possessed), he could have gone back in and kept fighting. Something didn't make sense. After all, it was Vindice who invented the Flame. The Vindice must have a greater connection to Daemon after all…

So Wend had to get out of the picture. _Now_. I couldn't do anything about Julie yet, and Adelheid would be faced off by Hibari. I couldn't ruin the others forming a bond with their counter-Shimon parts. It was essential that Enma and Tsuna became good friends.

Now that it was the new day…

I continued walking to school next to Hibari, who had his face serious for once. He must have been looking forward to fighting Adelheid.

Apparently they had been planning to fight against each other _anyway_.

Fighting freaks.

"Thank you, Hibari," I murmured as I walked beside him. His sleeves of his black jacket just flapped a bit in the wind as he looked down his nose at me.

"This is for the good of the school as well as my debt," he just said shortly, and I risked a grin.

"Still helping me anyway."

This time he looked at me and sighed. "We have a common interest. That is all."

I shrugged and continued walking alongside him. Today I had opted to wear my uniform a bit more neatly (usually I just didn't bother), even pulling my hair up into a neat ponytail. Hibari had raised an eyebrow that morning at my sudden compliance with the school's dress code but hey, it was thanks for his cooperation.

Then Hibari cleared his throat, his voice sharp and crisp as he kept walking astride with me.

With which I was much impressed, because usually he would walk slightly before a person to show his superiority. Ha, what changed?

"Did you receive any memories after the earthquake?" He asked, eyes facing straight forward.

I looked up at him curiously, eyebrow raised.

"I heard there were many people who did. Like Dino, for example. You should ask him, because I didn't."

There was silence, before Hibari replied with a dismissive 'hn' and stopped walking next to me, walking in front of me instead and straight into the school and headed to the reception room.

I frowned at his weird behaviour. I really did have to avoid him, but he obviously didn't like me yet. I couldn't barge in on Tsuna either, because he wouldn't become friends with Enma that way.

And anyway, did canon have Hibari remember his ten-year-later memories?

Ten years later memories?

…

_Ten years later memories?_

Hibari had reached the reception room's door now, and I jogged to catch up. "Hibari, you don't mean you remembered something like you—"

I was cut off by Hibari's sharp smirk.

"Yo, little herbivore. Here to fight me?"

I peered through the door, accidentally bumping into Hibari (who gave me a _very_ annoyed glare) and saw a glimpse of Adelheid.

Huh.

How nice. Our prey came to us. Step one of plan finished. Now Hibari just had to beat her (no doubt about _that_ happening), and then help me with Wend.

"Let's go the roof. It's more interesting that way," Hibari yawned at her, eyes amused and dangerous and _angry_ (I think it's because she modified the uniform. And because she was sitting in his chair like she owned it. Maybe it was both). "You look weak. I want an interesting fight."

Adelheid narrowed her eyes, and uncrossed her _really long_ legs, and stood up gracefully, the piece of hair that covered one eye flicked to the side as she looked down her nose at Hibari.

"There is more room to fight there anyway. Don't regret underestimating me," she said in a smooth voice and suddenly I had two people towering over me instead of one.

Okay. I didn't like her. She narrowed her eyes at me, somehow exuding elegance even while walking (and flashing her underwear… she should lengthen her skirt a little. At least I knew Hibari wouldn't affected, the asexual iceblock). "You are…"

Hibari moved in front of me, before looking surprised at himself. I stared at him a bit too (err, I would just ignore that) and looked (or tried to. He was already a bit tall) at Adelheid.

"Ignore me, bystander," I said flatly, putting my hands up. "Very much weaker than both of you, so don't bother trying to kill me please."

"You are the Vongola Star Guardian. You cannot be weak."

I stared at her blankly, and was glad to see she was a bit unnerved. "Busted? No really, no intention of fighting and getting in between him" I pointed at Hibari, "and a fight. I'm not really that suicidal."

Hibari seemed irritated at himself as he scowled at nothing and just whirled around, walking towards the roof.

"See?" I sighed. "He's already tired of waiting. Fighting freak."

Adelheid just continued staring at me with that small graceful frown on her face before walking past me without a word just like Hibari.

"You two are just like the perfect pair," I said to myself as I walked behind them. "You're both like fighting, like discipline, like power…"

"Be quiet, Sunglasses," Hibari said shortly before me.

"Sorry," I sighed as walked a bit faster to catch up to Hibari, passing Adelheid on the way as she looked us both in curiosity. Wondering at our relationship? Probably nothing though. "Running along sleep deprived. I talk a lot when I'm sleep deprived."

Hibari threw a non-committal glance at me, and gave a bland 'hn'.

We reached the roof, and both of them marched forward, leaving me behind to jump onto the roof of the stairwell. Amusingly, they both just climbed over the fence, just like that, where there was a ledge, about a metre and a half wide, before a drop of three stories.

The side where Yamamoto had attempted suicide was the other side. This ledge faced the front of the school. They stood there, staring at each other and sizing each other up. I got prepared to watch the show.

Adelheid took a step forwards, her high-heeled boots making a strange _clunk_ sound as she got into her battle stance. Hibari didn't move at all, just looking at her with half-lidded eyes that spoke of nothing at all. He still hadn't pulled out his tonfa yet though.

They stood there for a while yet, and I started to get sleepy with the slightly warm wind that was blowing in my face. There was a hint of spring or summer in that breeze, promising fields of grass, butterflies, and great swathes of blue sky lazy with clouds and the sun… My eyes drifted closed, just for two seconds…

"_You were my best friend, Alice…" Amanda looked up at me, my hand in her stomach as she coughed out those words, splattering spit and saliva all over my face. I drew back my hand in horror, as her beautiful face was marred with bruises (was it from me? Please no, no, no!) and her arms clutched me to her. I could feel her breath on my neck as she breathed her last…_

My eyes jerked open, and I was unamused to find that I had hardly sneaked half a minute of sleep. I yawned, as I focused on Adelheid and Hibari again.

I haven't had _one_ night of good sleep ever since I came back from the future. Added to the fact the last few nights in the future were full _of_ sleepless nights… I was ready to drop dead then and there.

Thank goodness I was kind of unhuman. I would never be even walking if it wasn't for that.

Hibari still hadn't pulled his tonfas out. I gave him an unamused stare. What was he playing at? Pretending to be all macho and manly or something?

"Looks like you're finally ready to fight," Adelheid just said as she casually rolled her shoulders and stared at Hibari.

Hibari just replied as blankly as possible – "Of course. Your actions are intolerable."

And of course, in Hibari-land, to do something like trying to disband the Disciplinary Committee is intolerable. And the issue of her _sitting on his chair_ of course.

Ha. I gave a tired smirk even as I tried to wake up a bit by rubbing my eyes. Hibari suddenly pulled out his tonfas, so fast that Adelheid was shocked, taking a hasty step back and reaching into her skirt band to pull out her own weapons. Hibari's hair was in his eyes, and I kind of wondered how he could fight like that…

By then, Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryohei and their respective Shimon opponents were already on the roof, with Tsuna running through the door.

Yamamoto was standing next to a very delinquent looking boy who looked like a thirty-year old. Kaoru Mizuno even had a pompadour without even joining the Disciplinary club. I choked back on a laugh as Yamamoto kept beaming and chatting to him like the genuine guy he is. He had his sword slung around his shoulder, and he kept that irresistible smile on his face. All the while I could see Yamamoto was actually really concerned at how sullen his new friend was.

Then there were the two idiots. Ryohei and Koyo Aoba. Aoba looked studious, but just hearing his yelling – near identical to Ryohei – was enough to make my head hurt _(I mean, TWO Ryoheis? Did I just think that?)_

Ryohei was shouting at Hibari. "What are you doing, Hibari?!" Then he waved his arms around in an attempt to display his frustration.

Aoba was shouting at Adelheid. "Defeat the Nami student!" Then he dissolved into cackles.

Both were not helping matters.

Rauji Ooyama was a tall overweight guy, and Lambo's future opponent. Although he looked a bit slow, he was actually the only sane one there with a good judgment. He said, in a oh-so-very-normal voice, maybe a bit higher than expected for a guy _that_ size – "Looks like you got yourself into trouble, Adelheid."

Tsuna was generally screaming, and Enma was generally being gloomy. Shitt P jumping up to the roof seemed like the start of matters, as Adelheid took the chance to retrieve her fans (attached to the inside of her _really short_ skirt) and attack Hibari with a dash forward. Yamamoto looked shocked.

Even his katana wasn't sharp after all. Adelheid's fans were knives made into a shape of a fan.

It could have been lethal.

Hibari just looked annoyed, and he even had this slight childish pout in his voice (of course, Hibari would never actually _physically_ pout) when he dodged all of Adelheid's calculated swipes without even breaking into a sweat and walking backwards.

"That's another violation," he said his voice unamused. "Basically, I'm the only one who can bring weapons to school."

Or people that he approves of. Gokudera was allowed dynamite because that was his weapon and without it he was useless and uninteresting. Same with Yamamoto.

Sometimes, I sighed, Hibari was so _childish_.

I looked past them, and was amused to see that the people on the ground were staring in shock at the two crazy people on the roof swiping at each other with lethal weapons.

Enma gave a soft murmur, his eyes wide as he clenched his fists.

"He's dodging it…"

Aoba – the idiot that Ryohei was in the same class with – was having a nosebleed.

"For that guy not to waver at Adelheid's beautiful underwear showing attack… WHAT A GUY!"

I snorted. It was Hibari. What did one expect? Tsuna shared my sentiments.

"No matter what, Hibari is really strong! That girl better apologise to him!"

That just got Adelheid annoyed, and she stepped it up a notch.

"Naïve!" she contemptuously said, and jumped backwards, her feet lashing out as she did a backward somersault.

Hibari had been underestimating her. His senses were telling him that Adelheid was weaker than him, and he thought he could beat her. He wasn't mistaken. He could.

He was only mistaken that the fast swipes she was giving him were her true strength, that's all. She could still be stronger, but not as strong as him. He thought she attacked primarily through her arms, like him, and didn't expect to dodge a movement from her legs. Most of his opponent's style was like that.

Me, Dino, Tsuna, Mukuro, Genkishi, Daisy.

Hibari had been getting complacent.

Adelheid kicked him with her heelsto his cheek, where he had tilted his head to avoid. His eyes narrowed. It was unacceptable for her to get so close to successfully attack him, it was so _obvious_ that it was what he was thinking. In near one second, Adelheid was flying away from him, clutching her stomach from a brutal hit from Hibari's tonfa. From his right arm.

_(One word defines all: Ouch)._

Adelheid twisted in the air, landing in a crouch on her feet as her fans were exuding some sort of… wispy white smoke.

It seems like Hibari noticed it too.

She had been using flames.

"Adelheid!" Rauji exclaimed, the big guy taking a few steps closer in concern before stopping – he probably realised he was seriously outmatched.

And in their heads they must be thinking _how can we beat the Vongola if we can't even take down one of the guardians?_

"So you've finally gotten serious," Adelheid grimace/smiled/frowned.

In boredom, I tried to grimace and smile and frown at the same time as well. My face twisted both ways, and I gave up, respecting Adelheid in her advanced usage of facial muscles.

Hibari had no smirk or boredom on his face now. He was completely serious.

"Yeah. I'll bite you to death next." His eyes were calm as he gazed at Adelheid in curiosity.

If she could use flames, why didn't she _use_ them?

He was probably thinking of forcing Adelheid into using them. But Tsuna intervened, as he, in the middle of screaming, 'HIIE! THIS IS BAD! He's going to bite her to DEATH!' got unwillingly turned into a punch bag by Reborn who cited the usual reason.

"Then stop it. It's your responsibility as Boss."

And he proceeded to kick Tsuna right in the middle of their two attacks in a monkey suit.

I cursed, using the vine Reborn had used for his dramatic entrance to increase my speed as Tsuna sped towards the two _really strong_ people. What was Reborn thinking? Even Tsuna would die from two attacks like that to the head!

I reached Gokudera in half a second, and he gave a surprised squawk at _'hey, you were on there?'_ and used him as a leverage and pushed back on his shoulder with my foot so I sped after Tsuna, letting go of the vine _(I mentally apologised to Gokudera, who was sent stumbling backwards with a vine tangled around him) _just slightly faster than Tsuna.

They were all shocked when I hooked a leg and a foot on the green fence as I caught Adelheid and Hibari's attacks with my hands two seconds before they hit, so that it was my hand that got smashed into Tsuna's cheeks instead of _really hard_ metal.

I could feel Tsuna's teeth cutting into his cheek as I strained my arms _(my poor HANDS)_ against their attack before relaxing when they froze. Adelheid was staring at Tsuna, who collapsed to the floor with tears in his eyes rubbing his cheeks.

"What are you doing, you?" Hibari said to Tsuna with a bit of exasperation tinged in his voice. Only a little bit.

"You didn't die from that?" Adelheid asked Tsuna incredulously, who was rubbing his cheeks in pain. Then she stared at me.

All of the Shimon family present were staring at me.

"How did you get here so fast?"

I was grimacing at my hands (bruised yet again… my hands cannot get a break) and soothing Tsuna by wetting a tissue and putting it on his left cheek to cool it down and was wetting another tissue to put on his right, mentally laughing at how Tsuna looked like a white flabby cheeked raccoon. I was surprised at the attention before seeing how far I had swung.

Oh.

Cough.

That was awkward.

"Don't mind me," I waved my poor poor hands in her face. "I'm not strong at all."

Yeah.

My muscles were already shaking for overuse. That was one heck of a kick to get me to Tsuna in time.

Now that I think about it…

I grimaced and poked a calf muscle. Ow. I was never doing that again. What was Tsuna forcing poor sleep deprived people to do?

Adelheid narrowed her eyes at me, clearly not believing what I said. Enma was to my side, watching all this with wide eyes.

He must be overwhelmed by us. They were sent to kill us, after all.

I laughed nervously, and waved at Reborn. "Why don't you explain, Reborn? They're our guests, aren't they?"

Reborn nodded, pulling out his hat and an invitation.

"They're the Shimon family, who came to Namimori to attend the inheritance ceremony."

Tsuna gaped. "They're all mafia?" He asked Reborn even as Gokudera squawked out something in the background.

"Yeah, seven according to my sources," Reborn replied, making eye contact with me for confirmation. I nodded. Tsuna didn't miss this, as his eyes widened in recognition of fact – probably because his intuition wasn't singing '_what they're saying are all lies~'_

"Then… Then Enma too?" Tsuna' pointed at the small red-headed boy.

He gave a slightly disgruntled look, before slouching a bit more disliking the attention.

"You never asked."

Tsuna spazzed, and I quietly slipped off the roof from swinging off the ledge and into the third storey hallway. Maybe I could catch some sleep _somewhere_. Hibari would be occupied for awhile yet, and then we would face Wend together… Now that he had shown his strength, we could move. I hope he slipped that device on Adelheid successfully

I needed his help with this one as well (because sadly enough no one else could do it. The world was a cruel, cruel place).

And anyway, I snickered as I heard the teachers that had been stomping up the stairs yell at all the students on the roof, I escaped detention.

I was still snickering – a bit madly now, since I was so SLEEP DEPRIVED – when I bumped into a person when I rounded a corner. The others were following me

"Oh, sorry," I said automatically, looking up into colourless eyes. My own eyes widened. I stepped backwards a bit, back to where the others could see me at the end of the hallway. I couldn't hold my chopsticks with hands like mine, not right now. I had to at least wrap them first.

"Oh hello, Alice," Wend said pleasantly. "I just wanted to talk with you."

"Alice, wait for us!" Yamamoto laughed as he walked with the rest of the group towards 2-A. Too far away, at the end of the hallway.

I wondered if Hibari had started the plan already. Probably not. We were timing it for about lunch. He had been amazingly cooperative. I should have known that was a sign for bad luck, dammit.

"Jared. Take her to _that place_."

I went rigid as I tried to run away, even as my mind scrambled at the news that _Jared had been working for Wend all this time_. The people on the other end of the hallway were starting to realise something was wrong now _(too late)_ and Yamamoto had quickened up to a run even while I pulled out my guns anyway and fired, ignoring the pain in my finger.

The gunshot echoed in the room as Jared effortlessly dodged, but taking him a few steps away from me. Screw turning my back on the enemy. I was going to run, darn it.

I ran towards the others. Tsuna was still absorbing the situation, shock in his body language even while Yamamoto had already pulled out his bamboo sword and was preparing to make it into a katana. Shigure Kintoki glinted fifteen steps away. Gokudera already had Uri out, but it couldn't run fast enough. Hibari wasn't there – he didn't like crowding with Tsuna after all. Enma and Adelheid were both looking at Wend, their expression telling me that _this wasn't planned by the Shimon._

_Good._

_If this is chased, then the Shimon wouldn't be questioned._

_After all, Reborn had said _seven_ were from the Shimon family. Not Eight. Wend is a Brighteye after all, first and foremost._

Jared caught me by the back of my shirt collar, and I nearly choked as I got pulled backwards and hauled over his shoulder.

"Let me go!" I growled, pointing my gun at his stomach. Non-lethal, but painful.

His face was blank. Wend smiled.

"Put down your weapons," he said to Yamamoto who was unusually serious. His sword was poised and ready, beautiful for its deadliness. Tsuna was on the verge of eating a Dying Will Pill, and Gokudera had the next of his Sistema C.A.I out – the dynamite shooter on his arm – trained on Wend. "I am a Brighteye."

"Then what are you doing to your own family, bastard?" Gokudera snarled.

Wend just calmly continued talking, even as Jared clapped a hand over my mouth to keep me from talking.

"The family wants her back for some urgent business in Italy, but she refused to go back citing the Inheritance Ceremony was too important to miss. However, the issue is of utmost importance, and one of the only people who can help is Alice. So therefore please ignore what this looks like. This isn't a kidnapping."

Gokudera remained unmoved. Yamamoto's sword was still out.

"Mmph!" I yelled with my eyes trained on them. They weren't stupid enough to believe him, right?

No, they weren't.

"If Alice doesn't want to go, she doesn't have to," Tsuna's calm voice said as his eyes flared with orange flame and his gloves lit. Enma and Adelheid had been herded away from seeing Tsuna transform by Reborn, which I was _insanely_ glad for because the plot can't be ruined.

Enma shouldn't be seeing Tsuna transform until later.

"But I have the certificates for it." He handed it to Tsuna, who took it and handed it to Reborn because it was in Italian. Reborn read it out to Tsuna instead.

"_Brighteye Number Fifty is needed urgently at the main house in Italy for the death of Brighteye Twenty Six and immediate recall of all Elite members are needed in the restructuring of the Brighteye Famiglia. Any resistance should be reacted with by force._

_The Head of the Family_

_Brighteye Number 1."_

And underneath what I could see was a dab of Star flame shimmering gently on top, and the legitimate signature of the Brighteyes. But Wend wasn't the head of the Family, and I _knew_ there weren't any disappearances until at least half a year later.

But Brighteyes were so secretive that most thought that the one named Number One would be the head of the family. Reborn would have no choice but to accept this as truth.

As Tsuna slowly retracted his Dying Will in confusion, Yamamoto lowering his sword at Tsuna's action and Gokudera looking at Reborn for confirmation, Reborn stared at the letter then at me who stared at his eyes, willing my thoughts out as loudly as I could. He could read minds, right?

_It's not true, don't believe him, it's not true_

"We have no choice but to accept."

I cursed mentally at this, before mentally apologising to Jared. I readjusted my gun and shot Jared grazing his side deeply enough to hurt, not seriously enough to be fatal. Jared hissed, loosening his hold _just a bit_ and I used this to elbow his chin from below, and wrenching my face from his hand.

"Tsuna, don't belie—"

Jared recovered much faster than I had expected, closing his hand on my mouth again, leaving his wound to bleed and drip all over the floor. My guns were confiscated this time. They probably had thought I didn't have the will to shoot him. Now that I proved I could…

There was none of that awkward shuffle in his gestures or that we had ever met familiarly before.

I should hone my inner Gokudera. He was pretty good at bitch-fighting.

Just as I was about to prepare myself, Jared leapt out the window, and Wend followed suit. "Don't worry about Alice!" He gave a nice pleasant laugh, blonde hair shining brightly in the sun.

He looked, so very ironically, angelic.

I took the time to sigh at the dead-mullet expressions on Tsuna and everyone else's faces.

It seems like when I came back I would have to teach them what to do when a friend gets kidnapped in front of you. As if I didn't have enough to do already.

Closing my eyes, I kind of drifted to sleep (yes, I was that tired that I could fall asleep even when being abducted)

_A flash of blood and a disappointed smile_

I forced myself to wake up, pretending it was because I had to track my surroundings.

Thinking about it, I was kind of glad Tsuna-the-Hero didn't chase after me. Now the plot could continue. Only my personal safety was at risk now, and hey, I had proved to Jared I was a good guy before. Maybe I could influence him again?

A blindfold was put over my eyes just as I recognised the direction we were running at (towards the mountains, Nami-shrine) and I smirked.

Before yawning.

How long were they going to run for? Jared was going to die of blood loss if they didn't stop soon…

Oh shoot, I was falling asleep again.

* * *

Hibari had sorted through his memories already. After the fight with the annoying woman and planting the device on her (too easy, he smirked) he went back to _his_ Disciplinary room and looked at his phone in distaste.

Then he called the number.

"_Kyoya! I would never expected you to call me!"_

"Hn," was his only reply. Hibari tried not to be annoyed at the lack of honorific, or the use of his first name, or the ridiculous cheer that accompanied that _grating _voice, or that his call had actually brought joy, (_JOY! _To think his voice could bring _joy _was one of the most offensive things in his life).

There was a pause.

"_Well, what do you want from me?"_

"…I wanted to know about the future memories."

"_I had them too! It seems you were all up to a lot of trouble in the future, weren't you? I'm sorry I couldn't help."_

"…They're true."

"_I've double checked with Romario and some others. They all seem to correlate to the stories that Reborn had told us about your experience. So yes, I think it's true. The whole Mafia world is watching Byakuran now to make sure something like the future given to us will never happen."_

"Hn."

Then he cut the phone call.

He refused to believe in his memories. They all seemed to correlate to him _actually liking Brighteye. _And if what his future self's memories seemed to indicate, it was more than like (the time he thought about the girl in ratio are 1:1, with his Nami-chu duties on the left and that _girl_ on the right).

An _attraction_ to the Brighteye?

The influence of the memories had been so strong that his body had moved on its own accord when she was being threatened.

But no matter how he strained, he couldn't remember her after a few years, and he presumed that she left as after around twenty, the memories were all filled with regret and herbivorish thoughts he was ashamed to know that he would think something like that.

He was proud of what he had done. He was, however, _not_ proud of what had motivated them.

If she had left, and he cared so much about her, why didn't he chase after her? His _future self_ (as those alien's thoughts were not his, just another reality) would have thrown away his pride in a bat.

As if he would do that.

What he was feeling for the girl now was just residue from the memories. They weren't even his. They had never gotten along before, they didn't need to now. It was easy to avoid a person if needed. After repaying her this debt he would just avoid her…

That seemed like running away.

Hibari scowled.

No, he wasn't going to run away. He would just patrol the halls normally, and if he met her than it would be plain chance. Sunglasses had promised adherence to the school rules for this debt repayment, so there was no need to chase her anymore.

Good.

He nodded.

He headed out of the reception room intent to bite some people to death. Maybe some late students.

He smirked.

* * *

I just didn't resist when they dumped me on the floor. I just smelt the area – it smelt clean at least, and there wasn't any dust (or I would sneeze). I think I heard some trees in the background too.

Someone rummaged my pocket and found my phone. I knew because the when the phone switched on, the weird beep sound asking for my password echoed in the room.

_Echoed._

Oh. A large room, empty and silent. I felt better knowing it wasn't a closet or something,

Somehow bypassing my pin code and password, he called someone, and a moment later I heard Tsuna's voice.

"_Alice! We were so worried, we were thinking of skipping school and looking for you!"_

Then a voice that sounded exactly like mine, even the _accent_ replied.

Who the heck was the voice clone?

"I'm on the plane already, Tsuna, but we haven't flown yet that's why I called you. Don't bother," my voice clone said to Tsuna on _my_ phone. I struggled against Jared's hand over my mouth. Voice Clone even sighed like me. I scowled against the palm.

"_So you're really okay?"_

"Wend was just doing his job. I just wanted to see the Inheritance Ceremony, and I knew I wouldn't get back in time if I went back to Italy. Do you mind, Tsuna?"

"_Haha, even though I want you to be there…"_

"I'll try and sneak out. Be careful, don't get into any weird situations… no, stupid point."

"_I'll try. Please call again when you get there, Alice!"_

Voice Clone sighed again. "I'll try. Bye Tsuna, plane is flying soon."

"_Bye!"_

The phone clicked shut, and the hand covering my mouth moved as they manoeuvred my arms to rest in my lap before tying them again. For some reason I couldn't move them. Did Jared do something? He was an assassin after all.

After I was nice and secure, the blindfold was lifted off and my eyes didn't have to adjust at all, since we were mostly in the dark. Outside the tiny windows were trees.

It was big. It was dark. It was empty, and Wend leaned down and said in an exact copy of my voice (there was a grey glow coming from his throat…)

"How are you feeling, Alice?" he said chirpily _in my voice_.

I scowled.

"That's just creepy," I replied in deadpan. Wend just laughed, before moving backwards.

"Well," he said in Jared's voice, "I have to go back to school and explain my actions like the good kid I am, so Jared would look after you for the time being. Won't you, Jared?"

Jared nodded.

"Then Ciao!"

He waved and left, the door slam echoing a few times through the room/shed/thing.

"Hey Jared."

"Don't talk," he said harshly as he continued bandaging his wound. I grimaced, but complied. There was always time for negotiating. The main thing was to find the _right_ time to start talking. Once the ball started rolling, it would continue on its own.

I just had to wait until the road was smooth.

I settled down, waiting for the opportunity. I could be patient when I wanted to.

Ah, what I would do for a hash brown right now...

* * *

Tsuna narrowed his eyes at his phone, before snapping it shut and flashing everyone a bright smile.

"Ah, it's the weekend, isn't it, Enma!" He said, scratching his cheek and smiling like he normally did. "Are you planning on doing anything?"

Enma gave a slight smile at Tsuna's cheerfulness.

"…I was thinking of eating some of the sushi from Yamamoto's store," he said quietly. Tsuna beamed.

"It's really good, you know!" He exclaimed. "I would go with you if Reborn allowed it, and Gokudera's got that schedule thing about guarding me." He sighed. "I don't want to be Boss…"

Enma looked at Tsuna curiously, before heading right when Tsuna turned left.

"My house is this way. Bye, Tsuna…" He trailed off, shuffling awkwardly on the street before slouching off. Tsuna grinned. It was nice to have a new friend who seemed to understand him.

But before that…

He pulled out his phone again. His Hyper Intuition was tingling.

Something had been off with Alice's phone call.

* * *

**And so Katekyo Hitman Reborn finally ends, and us fans are begrieved because WHAT ABOUT ALL TH PLOT HOLES?**

**Alas, I have much more planned for this fic than what canon allows, so please don't be annoyed when I continue beyond the ending of Katekyo (which was barely an ending at all. I'll probably change it. A lot).**

**I hope you all liked this, and review! Thank you for previous reviewers! XD I love you all so much! **

**I hope Elena and Wend's relationship become a bit clearer now. Wend was from a parallel universe where he died saving his little sister (Elena) from assassins – when he came into Katekyo, he met Elena, the daughter of the Prince… who looked like what his little sister would be like if he had been there to see her grow up.**

**For those who haven't read the Shimon arc, Elena's death is what fuelled Daemon's need for a Strong Vongola, as Elena got killed because Primo didn't want to be militaristic and discarded most of his battle forces, and enemies attacked the Vongola castle. Elena was one of the casualties.**

**Therefore, Alayne said her death was essential, as it **_**was**_**. Without her dying, there would be no future for the Vongola. But Wend, who had seen his dream in Elena, saw her grow up, saw her fall in love, saw her **_**live**_** as if he had never died… it was a small piece of home and family he kept in his heart. His plot was different to Alayne's. He never knew that Elena had to die, as he never pried into other people's plots. He just wasn't aware, and he was really angry (he did lose a lot of things after all).**

**Ah, but he's still a jerk. ==" I'll tell you why later.**

**XD I hope you enjoyed this update, and see you next week! Or next next week! ^^**


	55. some sleep, PLEASE

**I told you I would re-edit it! Now it has less mistakes. I will continue this chapter a little more, but if people want to reread it, here you go. Thank you for the reviews! **

**If you review again, just go anonymous. I think I recognise your names now, haha. XD Thank you! You don't have to review again though, just like you don't HAVE to read it again. This is just edited, with something extra at the bottom. XD**

* * *

Morning. A la lovely. The warehouse was still. Warehouse (because I went into a naming phase around two in the morning) was really, _really _silent. Like, warehouses needed people right? Why weren't any of them coming?

But true. I didn't know if it was a warehouse or not after all. I just personally _named_ it warehouse. It might be Wend's personal girly spaz place for a secret stash of BL novels for all I knew. And hey, it fit with the stereotype, you know? Warehouse. Had a nice ring to it. Now, if only a knight in shining armour would come and save me, since I really didn't care if I was being a damsel at this point. Maybe I could be a more bearable one, like Snow White, who had the guts to run away. Or Cinderella, who also had guts as she ran away from a prince, and _then_ seductively left a shoe behind for the prince to chase after.

Then had the brains to keep the other shoe, and not smash it or something like those stupid cheesy romance novels I recently bought. I still remember… Yamamoto (the character) had fallen in love with the transfer student Ayako from America or something, making it a love decagon.

And _then_ I realised how much I was out of it when I realised I had fallen into contemplating that type of stuff. Think Confucius!

Shaking my head to get rid of a crick, the sudden movement made Jared's eyes fly open and stare at me. I gave him my best cheesy grin, widening my eyes to its widest so I looked deranged.

He just closed his eyes again.

The thing was, it was so silent and _still_ in the warehouse, even breathing felt wrong. I hoped Jared would move, but he was sitting like someone dead. Not moving at all.

And there was another problem.

A pressing one.

Even worse than needing to go to the toilet.

…

I. Was. So. Bored.

I shifted again, making Jared startled (I didn't know why. It wasn't as if I could pop out and be AHA I ESCAPED. If I could, I would have done it heck long ago, right? Like, before dinner or something, so I could eat Grey's cooking.)

Now look what Jared did! He made me hungry. Urgh. I read somewhere that missing breakfast made a person think slower.

I will tell you now.

That is a fact.

My right arm was getting a bit numb though, while my left remained fine. Strange? I think not. I was lying on my right side, after all.

And I think I had an escape plan ready. My guns were useful and all, but hey, my main weapon were chopsticks and flames.

You know, flames of _invisibility?_

If only Jared would just go to the _toilet_. He would need to, right?

And shut up about relying on a cliché. He was human, and my brain wasn't working at all, except if you think fantasising, strangely enough, Hibari and Tsuna X burning and Roll-ing the warehouse and 'killling' me in the process is my brain functioning properly.

So. My mind was working something like this.

Jared = human = digestive system + food = waste = toilet

That was my logic. It was infallible. Even little kids knew what a toilet was. So Jared would go soon. Right?

Another hour passed. Even _I _felt the need to go toilet. Jared continued staring out like he was dead, but just playing alive just for the sake of it. His hair was lit up dimly around his ears. They looked like fins. And haha (I started hysterically giggling here, which perturbed Jared a little bit. I wonder why?), I was hallucinating or he was wearing goggles.

He looked like a fish!

A Dead fish!

A Zombie fish!

That was it. Jared was a zombie fish. Zombie fish didn't need to go toilet. I nodded to myself in resolve. This was a hard to solve fact.

Damn it then. I needed another escape plan.

And sleep. Definitely sleep.

Wait, was that a Pikachu I see on Jared's jumper?

* * *

Tsuna died on his table, his eyes staring unseeingly into his blank maths notebook. What was going on? Too many shocking things were happening all at once!

He glanced up at Enma, who was gloomily staring at the board, a pen drooping in his fingers not even pretending that he was writing notes. Enma and his friends were mafia, firstly, then secondly, his friends realised he was finally becoming (_ohmygod OFFICIALLY_) Vongola Tenth.

And being way to happy about it for him. Even Reborn was smiling back there! He was going to be _gang-pressed_ into the ceremony. He just _knew_. There was absolutely no doubt about the explosives that were going to be set in his room.

He was going to go. Whether he wanted to or not.

He mind backtracked. Rewired. Played.

…_OH GOD HE WAS GOING TO GANG-PRESSED INTO BECOMING A MAFIA BOSS!_ He screamed in his brain.

His face must have been interesting because the math teacher looked at him funny. Really funny. Like a, 'why, Dame-Tsuna, I never knew you were constipated' type of funny.

He drooped. His arm-cushion was surprisingly comfortable.

(Gokudera squee-ed in a _manly_ way at how cute his Juudaime was in a rare moment of pause in his research into UMAs. His Juudaime was the best! An artist! And the best thing was, if anyone contradicted him he could just blow him up and he knew in his heart Juudaime wouldn't mind! ...On the otherhand, Yamamoto was sleeping. Or pretending to, at least)

Tsuna sighed into his arm. And thirdly, Alice got kind-of-kidnapped-but-not-really right in front of them and everybody was depending on him deciding what to do about it. And the thing that topped the cake was that he wasn't anything special without his Dying Will – even he knew that.

Propping his textbook in front of his face idly, he personally really wanted to run away (and promptly his Hyper Intuition sharpened _and what was that gleam in that tree? …REBORN?_)

...

Being Mafia Boss was no joke.

But he never really wanted to become mafia boss. Cautiously glancing up to see the teacher facing the blackboard, Tsuna glanced sideways at Kyoko, who in turn was worriedly glancing at Alice's chair and trying to take notes at the same time. Tsuna gave a small blush. Adorable.

His little dream was to just find normal work, raise normal amounts of money, and then someday… marry Kyoko. He continued looking at her, not realising he was blatantly staring until the teacher cracked his ruler on the desk.

"Sawada!" Sensei growled. "Stop drooling at Sasagawa and answer this question!"

Tsuna stumbled a little as he scrambled up, giving a small 'hiie' of intimidation when he saw that long-ass equation sprawled across the board. His mind froze.

Gokudera was waving a big piece of paper with the answer _FIFTEEN X + Y! GOOD LUCK JUUDAIME!_ emblazoned on it. It didn't register.

"Umm… one?"He mumbled, and immediately the whole class started laughing.

It was nice to know people found him funny. Not.

He shrunk back into his chair, as the teacher tried to find someone who actually knew the answer. The teacher avoided Gokudera who was glaring at him _(how dare that lowly teacher insult Juudaime!) _

There was a faint air of puzzlement when the teacher stared at the empty desk.

"Anyone know where Bright went?" He asked.

"She's not here today," Kyoko piped up, giving her brightest smile with her lie. Tsuna suddenly missed the slightly dry chuckle that always accompanied that smile, Alice on the sidelines (always on the sidelines) muttering something about Kyoko's sparkle smile. Tsuna looked at the empty seat. There was no-one staring at the Sakura today.

The teacher nodded.

"Okay then, Gokudera!"

And Tsuna was once again aware of the lack of that once-intimidating presence on the back of his head. Even glancing at Kyoko didn't help.

_Alice… are you really alright?_

* * *

Hibari frowned at Kusakabe.

"You mean she was taken away by Wend before class started?"

"Yes, several student reports tell of a person holding Bright-san, and another person – unidentifiable – jumping over the school fence."

Hibari looked down at some of the reports – some were filed by Disciplinary members. They would usually be able to identify a person… unless it was like what Sunglasses said, and he really had the ability to 'not be remembered'.

He mused to himself.

No wonder she didn't turn up for their plan at lunch. Although kind of annoyed, he smirked.

Now she would owe him instead. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the Reception room down towards Wend Graney's classroom.

Time to turn the tables.

* * *

Jared twitched in the warehouse for the first time in fifteen hours or so.

It was a shock to my system. I felt my heart couldn't take it.

_Nothing_ was allowed to twitch in this stillness. I even managed a doze halfway into my captivity, and even the people dying in my dream moved slowly. That was how still this place was, slow and silent and wonderfully infectious at it.

My eyes followed curiously at Jared who stood up a bit stiffly and went to a door on the side. He opened it.

And hey, that was a toilet.

My first thought was something like this.

_Wow, zombie fish have to go toilet?_

Then my rational, although sleep deprived brain caught up.

Second thought: _hey, that thought was kind of stupid_

Third thought: _Hey, toilet._

Fourth thought: _Toilet. I think there was something important about that fact._

Fifth thought: _Heck, I want to sleep._

Sixth thought: _Oh right, escape._

Please don't blame me for my slowness. Please blame the lack of breakfast instead.

I started to will Flames out of the ring hanging around my neck. It was slower that it would have been if it had been on my finger, but it worked _somehow_. Covering myself with it, I willed myself to be invisible. Then I forced myself to roll across the floor and towards the door.

And then I realised that it was locked (simple, easy to pick), I was tied up, and I was lying on the floor. The lock was eighty centimetres off the floor.

I now fully understood the phrase 'so close yet so far'.

I believe my frustration was akin to Yamamoto (the character) being in love with four girls at once, and being crushed on by another two and a boy, while having his long-lost brother being protective and stealing his ex-girlfriend that he still kind of liked while the girl he did like was having an illicit love with a teacher and used him as an emotional dumping bag.

Staring at the door knob, I suddenly wanted to scream. I was smart enough not to, of course, for that would ruin the point of you know, _escape?_

Great. As wonderful as I am, even I couldn't open a door like that.

I heard the toilet flushing. Jared came out, and looked unsurprised to see that I had magically disappeared. He looked at the door, and seeing it unopened he shrugged and stared at the door.

Damn. Even he knew I couldn't open the door. But at least he didn't know where I was in this big warehouse.

…as if that helped.

* * *

After school, Tsuna passed by the local shrine on the way home, worrying about way too much stuff for a fifteen year old.

That was right! He was friggin' fifteen! Why were they choosing him to become Boss? Xanxus would do so much _better_!

"AAAAH!" he screamed, knowing no-one was around. No-one visited this shrine anyway. "NO-WAY AM I BECOMING MAFIA BOSS!"

It felt nice to yell it out, all the while knowing that it didn't really help anything. Reborn heard him say it every day, the Ninth wouldn't change his mind just because he didn't feel _ready_, and hey, as if that would change people being enthusiastic and did his yell really help find Alice at all?

Nope.

He was just about to sigh and continue on when a slightly hesitant voice, not really over a whisper, asked him

"Why don't you run away?" Tsuna whirled around. And there lay Enma fresh from a round of bullying. He stared at the ceiling of the shrine impassively. "I'm always thinking about running away too…" Enma continued, holding a tissue to his bloody forehead.

"Enma, those injuries!" Tsuna cried, alarmed at his injuries. He remembered being beaten once, but that was only once as afterwards his dad –the only time he was useful – had called the school and the bullying stopped. "Were you bullied again?"

Silence answered that question. Tsuna winced at himself.

Yeah, as if Enma beat _himself_ up. Stupid question.

"When humans have power, they use it rashly," Enma said, voice rasping a little, not willing to look at Tsuna. "The Mafia, school bullies, they're all like that."

Enma said that fully conscious that next to him was the successor of the most powerful Family in the world.

Who had nothing in mind right then except his health.

It was strange how some things work out, Enma mused in his head as he glanced over at Tsuna who was bending over him and rapidly firing some Japanese that was _way_ too fast for him to handle. He heard something about if he was alright though. Tsuna… Tsuna was so _different_ from what he had imagined him to be.

Enma couldn't help but feel doubt at what Julie and Wend said about him. Even Adelheid seemed off sometimes. Tsuna was like himself. Only still with a family.

He ignored the words babbling out of Tsuna's mouth, and looked, truly _looked_ at him the first time.

He was nothing special. Tsuna was nothing special. Yet they were the head of mafia families.

"What about you?" He asked, his voice near a whisper.

_Are you one that bullies people when you have power as well?_

Tsuna stuttered at the strange question.

_What was he asking about?_

Enma blinked at him, before slowly sitting up and shuffling away. At his back, he heard Tsuna mutter. "That's right… if I hate it I could just run away…"

Then the baby came… Arcobaleno, the strongest one. Reborn, an ally of the Vongola. He arrived hitting him on the back of the head with a tennis serve, and surprisingly, Tsuna's as well. Enma was a bit puzzled – who treated the future heir of the Vongola as a tennis practice anyway?

And why was the baby wearing a skirt?

Cosplay?

The baby was an otaku?

"If you run away, I'll smash you with an Ace?" The crossdressing baby gave a cute wink to end the sentence. Enma gave an involuntary 'gurk' at it.

Creepy.

Then somehow, Reborn changed back into his suit.

"When two idiots come together, they sure think of stupid things. You should consider the Ninth's feelings," Reborn said, landing lightly on the shrine steps. Enma watched, slightly confused as Tsuna echoed Reborn.

"The Ninth?"

"For the sake of your ceremony, the Ninth sent out heartfelt invitations to all the families connected to Vongola, no matter how small or weak they were. He was pleased to know one of the Families went so far as to transfer for the ceremony. He thought you could become good friends considering you're all around the same age," Reborn said, crossing his arms and staring at them both.

"Good… friends?" Tsuna parroted, staring at Reborn.

Enma knew Mafia speak a bit better.

Friends, potential allies. Thought, indicating confidence that the Shimon family _would_ bend down to the Vongola. Enma blocked most of the rest, knowing that they, _his_ family didn't need protection. They didn't become strong, train so hard for _nothing._

Even if Tsuna was surrounded by strong people. Even if they were a small group, even if they might get killed and annihilated after they killed Tsuna.

At least they would die knowing they at least _tried_ to avenge their families.

_Mother, father… Mami… the heir of the people who killed you is right here in front of me. But he's not what I thought he was. What should I do?_

Tsuna yelled out in shock when he heard that enemy families were targeting him, and Enma glanced at him.

Naïve as well, this Vongola Tenth.

Enma looked at him, slouching a bit (ow, his cheek hurt). Did he seriously believe that all families would support him and no one from the Mafia world would try and stop the ceremony from happening? That was nearly bordering idiotic. Bordering his _own_ behaviour.

Enma was observing Tsuna when they got attacked.

And Enma finally saw it.

Tsuna's Hyper Dying Will Mode.

_Will you abuse your power, Vongola Tenth?_

* * *

Wend didn't come back so I continued my invisibility role for the whole day. One burst of Flames every five hours or so.

Imagine my surprise when, after the fifteen hour mark, so around ten o'clock at night, the door got kicked open and kind of fell on me (yeah, I know, fun) and seeing a purple tonfa in my face.

I only knew one person who used tonfa. A few people who used purple flame. One person who used both.

Damn. It was strange how fate works. I would have been really glad he was here if I was trying to stop laughing at the sheer irony of the situation. When I wanted friendly relations with him, he was trying to kill me. Now when I wanted to avoid him (lest the consequences of the dreaded word _LOVE _once again fill that battle-filled head of his) we got along, worked together, and now he became my knight in shining armour?

"Yo, Hibari."

I let myself slide into view so that the ball of grey flames lit up the area (albeit a little creepily. Hibari looked so _scary_), and stared up at him with an amused quirk in my face. What was _with_ this situation? He even had a full moon to back up his bloodthirsty atmosphere.

Or whatever he was exuding. Though knowing his smirk…

Now that the door was open, I was suddenly subject to how cold the night was outside. It was nice, in a way, and there was a mild breeze blowing through the building now, although I wasn't allowed the time to appreciate it.

"Sunglasses," he acknowledged. "He has been taken care of."

I gave him a doubtful eyebrow. "How? Isn't he immortal or something? I was sure that we needed to work together, but you seem fine now. How did you get here anyway?"

Wait. I was asking too many questions. I shut up. Stupid mouth. Then the mouth part of my brain demanded more sleep. The small surviving number of logical braincells said I couldn't.

Then I realised that I was talking to myself.

_First sign of madness. Focus on Hibari. At… his eyebrows. He has pretty eyebrows._

"Hn," Hibari replied eloquently.

"Awesome. Though I severely doubt you did manage to get Wend, no matter what you did."

"Hn?" He asked, eyebrow raised.

"He's right behind you."

Hibari whirled around and kicked Wend even though I just _said_ it just half a second ago. Freaky reflexes/battle instincts/whatever.

Wend surprisingly wasn't very fast, or just sucked at dodging because he got kicked right into Jared, who had been about to attack Hibari from the right. They both crashed into the other side of the warehouse from that, an amazing feat considering how far away that wall was. Hibari had gotten stronger again.

_Scary_.

I felt hands pushing me up and exploring the ropes.

"Yeah, I would have escaped a long time ago but these knots are wonderful work. I couldn't do anything except for rolling, and after that I couldn't open the door."

The look Hibari sent me was half very-irritated and half did-I-ask-for-that-no-so-shut-up. I shot him a half smile in reply. He just scowled and grunted, before simply using his tonfa and somehow cutting them all in one swipe.

Gingerly, I rotated my shoulders as I unbent my knees and straightened my back with those audible _pop _sounds that kind of freak me out. As I was seeing if everything was in working order, Hibari had already stalked forward (his jacket was _still_ flapping - poser) and he called out to Wend.

"I hit you with a fatal blow to the head, neck, and stomach. Why are you still alive?" He asked with mild curiosity, battle ready.

I simply stopped massaging my ankle and stared at Hibari. _What?_

Jumping in between ridiculously strong people, getting kidnapped, being sleep-deprived, and having to face one mafia family after another…

Ah, the life of a simple middle school student in Japan.

"You tried to kill him?" I somehow choked out. Although it didn't sound like a choke.

I was proud. I sounded remotely calm.

Hibari shrugged. "You said that he wasn't an herbivore."

…so he put killing blows on anyone who wasn't an herbivore?

I was _so glad_ I was an herbivore.

…Even though he had never really called me one, and he _had_ told me he didn't think I was an herbivore in the future, at least I wasn't a full blown threat?

_Three fatal blows and his still isn't dead…_

Wend smiled. "You're quite fast, as expected of Vongola's strongest guardian. Even when I was trying to stop you reaching here, you were fast enough to evade me."

"How did you survive my attacks?" Hibari asked instead, his voice starting to fill with something akin to what most would call 'happy expectation' in his voice. Only, since it was Hibari (and therefore would not be something as herbivorish as happy), it was 'battle anticipation'.

Was he anticipating his battle already?

"Those types of things don't work on me, even if it hurts." Wend massaged his head a little, wincing when he poked a spot. "I'm immortal, you see. I've been here to see the rise of the Vongola, since what, four hundred years ago? And I still look like this. Forever young!"

He smiled.

"Makes tricking people a lot easier too. Swindling, becoming friends, embezzlement…"

Hibari dashed forward.

Simply put:

He didn't care. One bit. That Wend was immortal.

Oh my, I groaned as I slapped my forehead. Battle freak. Fighting freak. Idiot freak (only he was smart, so why didn't he use his brain, damn it?)

Jared, who had been standing still this whole time moved into action, smoothly intercepting Hibari's attack and drawing him into battle. Hibari looked a little frustrated (this wasn't who he wanted to fight) but since Jared was strong enough to hold him back, even a little, he gave him his full attention.

I was amazed at how Jared was starting to wear down, and I revisited a very frequent question in my head. Where did Hibari get the training to beat even trained _assassins?_

"Dear Alice!" Wend exclaimed, walking forward with his arms outstretched straight past Hibari (who _growled_, I tell you, and that was freaking scary), "how did you like your trip?"

"Not much," I replied honestly.

"That's a pity," he mused.

"Can I go home now? I think I overstayed my welcome."

Wend frowned. "Of course not. You still haven't had tea yet."

I didn't bother warning him of the tonfa chain that was heading straight at Wend's back. I wanted to see if this immortality thing was true or not with my own eyes.

And Wend really wasn't good at fighting. He couldn't even dodge. No, he didn't even sense Hibari's attack coming, but still, somehow, managed to keep standing even when there was a _knife _sticking out of the area where his heart was supposed to be.

He even complained about how his blood was staining the floor.

My eyes widened, and I stopped trying to get rid of the pins-and-needles in my legs. I've had my doubts before, and nothing had really proven it but Wend was actually…

A real live walking talking _zombie?_

Oh dear.

I leaned back on the doorframe, letting Hibari do whatever he wanted in that warehouse.

I think I needed some time to understand the situation. The inheritance ceremony. Right. Shimon verse Vongola. Right.

My battle partner was an immortal zombie.

My mind shut down again.

It seemed to be doing that a lot these days.

* * *

Somehow Hibari managed to delay them both – injured Wend's legs enough, and Jared got tied by his own ropes – and we headed out towards some unknown place. I was just following Hibari now, trying not to be too loud because it was night time, and also because Hibari was annoyed at how he didn't completely crush his enemy.

Though Wend was out of the picture, even if temporarily. They would probably be back at school around midday tomorrow.

And by then I should have returned enough health to protect Tsuna from any wayward advances, as well as determining what Wend had done while I was gone.

Which reminded me…

"Thanks, Hibari," I said. "I owe you one this time."

Hibari smirked for the first time in half an hour.

"Hn."

Talkative.

"I'll wear proper school uniform and avoid you from now. I was glad for your cooperation."

Hibari's side glance implied he didn't _cooperate_ with someone like me.

"Right. Yeah."

And we lapsed into silence again. It was surprisingly comfortable, as I was at least expecting some awkwardness, but hey. Life can sometimes be nice, right? And it _was_ nice how after a day of stressing about how Jared was a zombie, and how I had to escape that the actual _escape_ itself wasn't stressful.

I think there were alarms ringing in my brain about how _much _I was relaxing around Hibari, but I was too sleep-deprived to care.

Home. Bed. Try sleep. Then Tsuna.

I waved Hibari goodbye when we reached my hotel and he just continued onwards.

Bur we did interact for such a long time without trying to kill each other – a nice change – and there weren't any budding feelings of romance either. I would doubt older Hibari's words if it didn't come _out of his mouth_.

Damn.

Avoiding people was never fun. With all this new peaceful (kind of) atmosphere between us too.

Oh well.

Tsuna came first, anyway. Waving at Grey (who insisted I take off the school uniform, shower, eat dinner, dry my hair, take some sleeping pills before letting me _collapse_ on the bed, the mother that he is) I fell into sleep rather quickly.

It was just that I couldn't _wake up_ quickly this time either because of the sleeping pills.

Thank goodness it was different this time. Instead of a grey, empty landscape with corpses, this time there was a chair.

I scowled. Such kindness and lovely manners.

"Well, sit down," said that _voice_, that one that I had been hunting for ages and ages. "We can't start anything without you sitting down."

My first question was why.

My second was why my body was moving without my consent.

I had no third question, because somehow Wend was stalking me in my dreams as well, as well as a Rokudo Mukuro fanatic, because who could seriously look so alike without at least _some _effort?

Then I noticed the spade in his eye and I groaned.

This was going to be fun, wasn't it?

Daemon Spade smiled and leaned forward. "How did you like my dreams? The ideas were oh so handily supplied by our dear Brighteye, of course," he nodded at Wend over his shoulder, "but I'm sure you loved them right?"

"Yeah. I did," I drawled with complete sarcasm.

They didn't seem to get it.

I sighed.

And sighed some more because somehow, one sigh didn't cut it for once.

"Why did you do this to me?" I asked.

"Because since people stole _my_ family away, I might as well make others feel what I'm feeling, right?" Wend grinned. "Daemon feels the same."

Daemon scowled at him. "Don't group me in the same group as me. I only talk to you because we are the only ones who know Elena."

"Yeah, yeah," Wend dismissed. "But mind you waking her up? She's falling asleep in the chair."

And indeed I was. Who cared about the evil masterminds plotting over my head? That could always come later. After the heavenly _sleep_…

I did manage to drop asleep in that dream, and just when I thought I would get some restful nice, pitch black place where I could recuperate I entered somewhere just as annoying. Suddenly, instead of you know, SLEEP, I was sitting in a ridiculously comfy chair in a room with grey walls.

Things just don't stop happening.

"_Kufufufufu…" _said a pineapple shaped shadow in the corner of the room.

Oh kill me now.

In my head I mourned.

_My sleeeeeeeeeep._

Then

_Oh god, I'm turning into Lambo. Stop the whining tendencies. Now._

And Rokudo Mukuro smiled in that twitchy way of his when ten plush lambs dropped onto his head. Kind of like that cucumber moment. Oh wait, I mentally apologised to Mukuro when after the lambs a cucumber dropped onto his head again.

He froze with that creepy grin on his face.

I gulped.

Then he slowly bent down and picked it up. He looked up, flicking his hair over his shoulder and grinning at me _shinily_. Literally.

"Do you have an obsession with cucumbers, Alice?" He asked pleasantly.

"No. I have a hash brown obsession," I replied truthfully instead.

Watching Mukuro twitch was one of the best moments of my week.

I closed the curtains to the crazy outside world before Mukuro could see the strangely suspicious behaviour of the people outside. Fun as it would be to see Mukuro's reaction to seeing his arch nemesis' (Tsuna, Hibari, Vongola in general) dance the cancan, I wanted him out of here first.

Seriously.

"Mukuro, what brings you here?"

* * *

**See you soon. Hopefully. *flings myself onto bed***

**So glad I don't get nightmares like Alice. I'm so mean. XD**


	56. People imprisoned by destiny

_Enma was looking curiously at the Vongola Juudaime… no, Tsuna, as he babbled on about how he didn't feel ready to become Mafia boss. _

"_I was told by the Ninth today to decide whether or not I want to become boss by the morning before the ceremony…" Tsuna said, looking at Enma earnestly, before looking downwards and fiddling with the hem of orange jacket. Enma actually thought this was quite surreal, as he settled in a more comfortable position (wrapping his arms around his legs) and continued to listen to Tsuna._

"_Ninth said to do as I wish, but I could tell he wants me to become boss and revert the family back to how it was during the days of Primo."_

_How… naive. Enma's face was blank, as he blinked slowly at what Tsuna just said. _

_Did the Ninth not know how Giotto betrayed the first Shimon, Cozart, and left their family to die and be mocked? To be persecuted?_

"_Vongola Ninth said that?" He asked blandly._

_Tsuna didn't even hesitate to reply._

"_Yeah, but… I think you know, Enma. That I'm not fit to be a Mafia boss! I mean, I suck at sports and studies and everything else, and I don't think I can give orders or stand above people…"_

_Enma's heart twinged at that. _

_Tsuna…_

_Tsuna was being honest with him._

_Tsuna was trusting him with things that he wasn't telling anyone else._

_Tsuna… was so different from the monster that murdered his family that he had painted in his mind…_

"_Why are you telling me this?" He asked, whisper soft._

"_Ah—s-sorry… It's just that I don't have anyone I can talk to about Mafia stuff." Enma looked at Tsuna, as he smiled sheepishly. "Gokudera believes I should be Boss, Reborn is practically here for that reason too. Yamamoto just goes with the flow, you know? And I don't think Ryohei really understands this Mafia business. Lambo, Hibari and Mukuro don't really care… though Alice might understand, but I think she's pushing me into being Boss anyway."_

_Tsuna fidgeted._

"_You kind of remind me of Alice, Enma-kun, you seem really dependable and it's as if you understand where I come from more than… Argh, that's not what I meant!"_

_Enma watched, more and more bewildered as this boy, this _heir_ to the world's strongest Mafia had a spaz attack because he was trying to explain his _feelings_ to him_.

_Tsuna wiped some nervous sweat from his forehead._

"_It was the first time I was told to run away," he grinned at Enma, fidgeting and nervous, and _honest.

_And Enma could only stare in wonder at the boy that proved all his preconceptions about Vongola false._

"_You're the only one who understands what it's like for a Mafia member to hate the Mafia—"_

"Don't put me in the same category as you."

_Enma's sharp tone cut through Tsuna's explanatory babble. "Unlike your lot, my family had a lot of scary things inflicted upon us by other Mafia families."_

"_Eh? What do you mean?"_

_Naïve._

"_The Shimon family has dealt with a lot of crap from other families," Enma reiterated in simpler terms, "because we're famous as a small and weak family. You could _never_ understand our pain," he sent a side-long glare, "Tsuna-kun."_

_He could still hear Mami screaming for her older brother, reaching out for him to save her from that man who decapitated her when he was still too far away…_

_Tsuna looked genuinely shocked, Enma observed._

"_So-sorry…"_

_At the look from Tsuna's face, and the silence afterwards, Enma sighed and continued._

"_But there are times when I feel that I could be friends with you, Tsuna-kun."_

_Like now._

"_Tsuna-kun is… different from other scary mafia people," he admitted, looking down and shrinking into himself because _what was he saying_ to the future leader of the people who killed his family?_

"I—I—I already consider us friends!" _Tsuna stuttered._

_And Enma could only stare at Tsuna's sincere face as he continued to babble about his family was friends, and how he could relate to him, and…_

_Tsuna left the room flustered and awkward and smiling._

_Enma reached into his bag, and phoned Adelheid._

"_I have a request… I know you'll disagree with me, but I really don't think Tsuna-kun is a bad guy…"_

_He listened to Adelheid. He clicked the phone shut._

_Give him a test, huh…_

_Sitting down, he wrote a letter._

_To Tsuna-kun_

_Right now I'm being threatened by the mafia group that took down the Giegue Family and is trying to interfere with the Vongola Inheritance Ceremony._

_I plan to go to the factory site they told me to at noon._

_Please help me._

_Enma Kozato_

_At four in the morning he left to go to the factory site._

_He would wait for Tsuna._

_Then Tsuna would prove to Adelheid, to the others, that he wasn't like the other Vongola…_

_That they really were friends._

* * *

When I woke up, things had changed drastically. Wend… Wend had been a bit too busy, if you asked my honest opinion (because seriously? I was gone for two days, TWO DAYS, and Tsuna and the others already got themselves into such deep crap?).

But that was, of course, before many things.

Let's go back a little…

* * *

Mukuro surprisingly wasn't that annoyed. He delicately stepped over the lamb plushies around his feet and sank elegantly into a padded chair.

"I couldn't contact you and…" he trailed off, looking a bit troubled. "I can't contact Chrome."

That sent alarms ringing in my head. I surprisingly didn't feel a bit sleepy here, in my mind room. I immediately plopped down on plush sofa that appeared behind me, and waved Mukuro to help himself to the random fruit bowl in the middle of the room. Then I steepled my fingers.

"Tell me everything. I've been kidnapped."

Mukuro raised an eyebrow.

"A Brighteye kidnapped?"

In other words… _a Brighteye affiliated with the Vongola family cannot possibly successfully kidnapped. The Vongola would be much too protective, the Vongola Tenth may be a fool but he is too sentimental _not_ to rescue a close family member. If it leaked out to the less forgiving Ninth there would be a worldwide search. On the other hand, with the Brighteye informational system –_

"By my own family."

Mukuro had an inner _aah, so that's what happened _moment. I let him.

"Inner feuds?" He asked.

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Do you have money?"

"No. I'll get to the point."

He opened his mouth. "I'm aware about Wend. The first Brighteye, wasn't he? He's escaped the reincarnation cycle into an angel. Do you know how?"

I sighed.

"It's complicated." The horrid yellow curtains fluttered agitatedly before calming down a bit when I tried to explain. Mukuro raised an eyebrow.

"I'm listening. We have time. Your body is trying to recuperate with the least amount of time possible."

Huh. That's interesting.

I shoved it to the back of my head.

"You know how we aren't allowed to murder… directly, right?" Mukuro nodded, twirling his trident idly in his hand. "Well, he suicided." His eyes lit with understanding. "And now he's practically immortal, and he has a very strong Mist user friend next to him. He's probably blocking Chrome from you, Mukuro."

Mukuro looked speculatively at me.

"Why don't we strike a deal?" He gave a spectacular… _evil_ grin. I nearly shuddered away. Actually I did. The whole room shuddered away. Oops. I forgot this was my mind room. Mukuro, sadly enough, didn't seem fazed at all at how weird it was in my brain. Did he get used to it?

…

That's kind of sad, in a way.

"You protect Chrome for me, and I'll tell you something interesting."

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously.

"What."

He smiled.

Damn. He knew how my curiosity drove me insane (and into other avoidable situations I will not mention _coughthefuturecough_)

What he told me was… _interesting_ to say the least.

"Maybe. This is payment for looking after Chrome." He narrowed his eyes at me before smirking at my (mildly) shocked expression.

"How did you know that? To know how to beat Wend even when _I _myself don't…"

"Kufufu~ Let's just say he and I are more similar than we would admit. I think that repays my debt to you, doesn't it? Wake up now, Brighteye. You're needed out there."

With a wave of his hand, the room shimmered, and Mukuro's stupid smirk never left his face.

_Wend and Mukuro were more similar than I thought…?_

* * *

I woke up.

What Mukuro had told me was true – when I woke up I didn't feel tired at all. My body had recuperated, which left me with my normal spastic level of energy of course (blinking and rolling over slowly as to use the least amount of energy possible to get a cooler spot on the bed) before blinking and rolling over again, getting up because there was probably school… Wait, wasn't it the weekend?

I reviewed what little I had in my head. Okay. What happened before I conked out?

Kidnapped, rescued, sleep, Mukuro, mind-blowing revelation.

Everything else was kind of blurry… what day had it been, for example, and where was I in the plot?

I wracked my head for info, even as I slowly pulled on a baggy dark grey jacket over my light grey shirt and pulled on some dark blue shorts. Pulling my hair out of the way into a high ponytail, and sticking my chopsticks into slots sewn into the insides of my jacket sleeves, I stared blankly at the window.

After Enma found out about Tsuna's Hyper Dying Will mode… Gokudera went crazy and paired up everyone to their Shimon counterparts and they became friends. What happened after that?

Something about Tsuna going to Ninth to ask if he was suited into becoming mafia boss? Wait, was that before or after Tsuna missing Enma's letter asking Tsuna to save him? Then Tsuna didn't see the letter, and Enma sat alone at the factory waiting for his new friend to prove he wasn't a heartless mafia don waiting for the whole day until after noon.

Then Adelheid came and persuaded Enma that Tsuna _was_ a heartless Vongola and then Enma… what did Enma do after that? He started what?

I couldn't remember at all. Padding softly towards the corner where I stashed the volumes of Katekyo Hitman Reborn! In the closet.

Yeah. I stashed the future of the world at the back of my underwear closet. But to be honest, it would be the last place anyone would try and search right?

That was my logic anyway, when half of the powerful mafia in the world I interact with were hormonal teenage boys and hey, what teenage boy would search a girl's underwear closet first for the secrets of the world?

Ha, not anyone I knew.

Opening the closet I pulled out the drawer and dug underneath the layers and layers of clothing and reached for the bottom left corner.

Huh? I couldn't seem to reach it. Well, it was a pretty deep drawer after all. I shoved away some more singlets and dived in, reaching for the bottom of the drawer, until my feet weren't touching the floor almost (I cursed my short height but to my defense the drawer, in the name of fashion, was designed to be as tall as my stomach). Then I touched the bottom corner of the drawer and the shock drove me to lose my balance and suddenly my feet weren't touching the ground anymore.

Not that it mattered.

My head was alert with near panic.

_Where was my sack of books?_

I had to go to Grey right away! I waved my legs, trying to get out.

…

Damn. I was stuck. This wasn't time to get stuck in a closet! I had to call Grey somehow!

…somehow.

I heard the door open. "…Miss?" he asked, confused. Probably wondering I wasn't in bed and headfirst in the closet (and stuck of all things to do in my free time).

Bless Grey and his perfect butler powers!

"Grey!" I yelped through a mouthful of shirt. "Help me out of here!" He complied, and I spluttered, heaving in breaths before sitting up primly and flicking my hair over my shoulder. I had to regain my lost dignity somehow.

Thank goodness Tsuna and the others _didn't see that._

I coughed and looked out the window. At least I knew it was practically impossible for this body to blush. Thank goodness.

"Grey, did you see that sack in the bottom of my underwear drawer?" I asked flatly. "Do you know where it went?"

"No, Miss. Last time I checked it was still there."

"When?"

"Three days ago."

I frowned.

"It's gone now."

Grey knew it was important to me, even if he didn't know why. I trusted him enough to know that he didn't look inside.

"There were no intruders, Miss, at least none that I would be aware of."

And it was impossible for me to have replaced it.

Oh crap. I smoothed out my frown for Grey's benefit, and stared out the window vacantly. Without those books I was lost. I didn't know this arc very well, or the inheritance arc afterwards. After that was the end… let's not go there. Survive today first.

Where did it disappear to? I couldn't remember a thing about what happened after this!

Well, a bit. I only remembered a bit. Like Gokudera stalking Shitt. P, so that isn't very helpful at all. I remembered who paired with who really clearly though, and Talbot's role, and that type of stuff.

Only one thing to do then. Find Wend. It's obvious it's impossible for me to have misplaced it, as impossible as Grey stealing it or something. The only person who would probably know about the existence of the novels and care to steal them was Wend anyway.

And it was already taken.

I slapped my forehead. Oh crap. If that was true, didn't that mean Wend knew the future and I didn't?

Was that the point of the kidnap? Distract people and steal my sack of books?

I headed out immediately, feeding some flames into my box so that Falcon and Hawk came out. Enlarging Hawk, I let Falcon out of the room first to scout (ignoring Grey's question of breakfast? Damn that breakfast sounded so nice right now. But what was breakfast to saving a few lives?) Then, opening the balcony window to its widest, Hawk gave a screech (I quickly shushed it) and flew out of the balcony, leaving Grey behind and diving a bit before soaring high. Soon enough the whole Namimori was underneath Hawk feathers. I bit down a gulp.

Thank goodness I wasn't that afraid of heights.

Closing my eyes to look at what Falcon and Hawk were seeing, my vision split into two again. Hawk's vision was so sharp it picked up features of everyone on the street on _all_ the streets of Namimori. Bird's eye view indeed.

Falcon was having a closer look on things, ducking and wheeling about. I saw Nana-san leaving the supermarket. I saw Tsuna leaving to go to school, with Gokudera and Yamamoto waiting for him, laughing sheepishly. Falcon gave a screech _one target down – Tsuna is safe _and wheeled up to join Hawk and I.

Tsuna looked up, saw Falcon and mouthed, '_Alice?'_

Sorry Tsuna. As miraculous as I am, even I couldn't talk through birds.

Falcon joined us a minute later, and I reorganised my thoughts a bit. Tsuna was going to school, questioning if he had the ability to become Mafia boss. I doubted the misunderstanding about the letter could have happened so quickly though, since I was only kidnapped for one day. Then I slept around two in the morning or something, and woke up…

Wait a second.

If I slept so late, how would I be so reenergised so soon? Even with Mukuro's awesome power to suck sleepiness away, four hours wouldn't near be enough, right?

Either that, or I slept through another day.

_That's_ why Tsuna was going to school even when my head said it was the weekend. It was the weekend when Tsuna visited the Vongola Ninth. After the visit to the Vongola Ninth, he went back home, talked to Enma and _what happened?_

I couldn't remember.

One thing to do then.

_Wend._

"Falcon, do you see Wend anywhere?"

A faint feeling of 'no' came through to me. Hawk however, shook his head in resemblance to a human nod.

"Hawk?"

Without a reply, he dived. I paled and scrunched shut my eyes, effectively seeing what the two birds were seeing. Fighting the urge to scream, Falcon seemed to be as confused as I was, as his part of the split vision was focused on my hair.

Hawk's eyes were trained on one thing though. An entrance to a warehouse? A really broken down one, as well. The front of the broken down warehouse was empty except for a small person with red hair, and…

Hawk landed, Falcon swooping down close behind and digging his claws into my shoulder. I winced but didn't protest.

The time was ten o' clock. Enma looked up at me with hope, confusion, hurt and sadness.

"You're… not Tsuna." He stated.

"No," I replied. I stared back at him, my mind slowly clicking in the pieces.

Misunderstandings.

He had sat and waited for six hours on faith alone that Tsuna _wasn't _the bad guy he thought he was. That he would come save Enma from the fake enemy, and that they really could have become friends.

But that letter had blown off the desk into the rubbish bin. Enma would never know that Tsuna never saw his plea for help.

"You didn't come here because of my letter, did you?"

So. Misunderstanding had begun. Tsuna went to school, not seeing Enma's letter and the only pathway to go into his trust.

Soon Adelheid would come and tell him that Tsuna was the same as all the other Vongola, and that the Vongola's 'sin' couldn't be forgiven. Then Enma would agree because he thought his family had been murdered by Sawada Iemitsu.

_What a wonderful plan you've got, Daemon…_

"No," I replied yet again.

Enma's eyes dulled, clutching his backpack a little tighter. I watched silently, having no qualms about what to do. The plot had spoken. Enma would learn to hate Tsuna again, and they would attack us at the Inheritance ceremony.

"Keep an open heart, Enma," I said instead, my eyes unblinking as I stared at him. "Next time we meet we would be enemies."

Enma's eyes narrowed and sharpened. Truly, as much as people said Enma wasn't fit to be boss, he was. Just like Tsuna.

Exactly like Tsuna.

"You know." He said, _something_ curling around something on the end of the chain around his neck as he reached for it slowly. "You know what we want to do to Vongola."

"The Shimon family. I know your past. I know your motives. I know the truth. Of course I know."

Enma never stopped staring at my face. Or more accurately, my eyes.

"Brighteye."

"Yes."

"If you know so much, why not tell me right now?" He asked, his voice never losing the normal edge of tiredness that he had consciously put into every movement he had made in Namimori. "The truth that you speak of so easily."

"That's not how it's meant to be," I replied.

"Even if your beloved Boss will get murdered?"

I made no reply to that.

"You make a good Boss," I said instead. Enma didn't reply to that statement, but instead finished pulling out his Shimon Ring. So that was the Ring that controlled Gravity. How interesting. He lit it, if only faintly. What the, why was he lighting that…

Oh.

"Woah." I held my hands up in an immediate surrender gesture. "I'm not strong enough to fight you. I just want to know where Wend is." I paused. "Peace," I added lamely.

"Why do you think I would tell you?" He asked back.

I shrugged.

"It's Brighteye business."

Enma continued staring for awhile, before stopping his flame and sliding back onto the chain on his neck.

"His hideout is in the forest."

Nice and informative, Enma-kun is.

"Thanks."

"…I thought he took you away to Italy," Enma said as he watched me release Falcon into the air to scout the forest. I took a glance at him, before closing my eyes to focus on what Falcon was seeing. Hawk was keeping a lookout on Enma on me anyway, so it was fine.

"He didn't," I said simply because it was pretty obvious he hadn't. If he did, then I wouldn't be standing here now, right?

"Why do you follow him?" Enma asked suddenly, his face confused and sad and betrayed because was Tsuna really not the person he thought he was?

_That he really was just like the Vongola that killed his family?_

I raised an eyebrow at the sudden topic change. Wend to Tsuna?

I turned to face him with my eyes closed, looking at him through Hawk's eyes. Why did I follow Tsuna? Well, it was part of my mission, of course. If I wanted to pass my mission, I needed to protect Tsuna and the plot. Somewhere from meeting him to our present point in time, I had crossed the line of 'going too far to go back'. From meeting Tsuna I had gained friends, and a life, I guess.

Imagining myself like Jack in the Brighteye mansion, who finished his mission in one go and had a whole life in a new world to waste thinking about what _could_ have been in his first life was horrifying.

Tsuna saved me from that. He and his crazy friends.

He let me think, and grow, as a person, no matter how socially stunted that person may be (I had no illusions about how I treated people – I didn't know _why_ people liked me, but hey, I didn't have problems with that). Tsuna was a pseudo-little brother/saviour because that was what he _did_. He was so pathetically human, that what made him useless in normal society was what saved people like me, like Gokudera, like Hibari, who had surrounded ourselves with people too great to be called people anymore and we have had to change ourselves to match.

What made me follow him as a Boss? Nothing.

What made me follow him as a friend?

Everything.

'_Why do you follow him?' _Enma had asked.

I hummed to myself, tilting my head up even as my vision didn't change – Hawk didn't move his head, and Falcon was still searching – but knowing if I opened my eyes I would see the sky, a symbol of Tsuna…

I smiled.

"Who knows?" I said with a knowing grin. "You might see it, after we all fight it out. Once you see the truth."

Enma was getting frustrated. "Truth? What's this truth—"

But I was done with playing the cryptic future teller. There was a screech that partly came into my mind – it wasn't really _there_ perse, but it came from Falcon as his eyes peered into something shimmering in the canopy of the forest.

"Falcon, you found it. Good job."

Hawk gave a piercing shriek (and since they seemed to like it so much I just gave up on shushing them. Sigh. Birds…) and flapped his wings before a little boost of Star flames let him shoot up towards where Falcon was wheeling, leaving Enma behind. Hawk trained his eyes on him for a few more seconds before leaving.

And in those few seconds, Enma tucked legs in, wrapped his arms around them in a foetal position and stared at the end of the courtyard. Waiting.

Hoping Tsuna would come for him.

* * *

The warehouse was empty. It was the same one, I recognised it.

Now that I was lucid and not sleep-deprived, I saw that surprisingly, the whole warehouse was covered with weak Grey Flames. Invisibility.

Of course. No wonder it took so long for Hibari to find me. This reminded me. I had to thank him.

He valued Japanese traditions right? Maybe I'll give him some Japanese water feature or something, for his garden, though I'm not sure he would like gardening or not. Though, back on the topic on hand…

I peered closer, and paused five metres away from the door. Or where there _was_ a door. That was why I saw this invisible warehouse in the first place – it was damaged. The door had been kicked in, and the flames covering the doorway hadn't been ordered to make it 'invisible' so there was a random black square hole in the forest that Falcon had saw.

Which totally wasn't suspicious, of course.

Haha.

I stepped inside, guns out and ready. Raising one, I clicked off the safety. It echoed ominously around, shivering slightly as the walls suddenly appeared from one step to the next. One moment I was in sunshine stepping into a black square – next, I was in darkness, the light a bright square behind me.

I tightened the hold on my gun.

"Wend."

Mukuro had told me.

_You can't physically beat someone who is immune to physical attacks. His body isn't really of this plane anymore – think of it as a doll that's stuck in one time while the world goes on around it. Wend probably can't bruise, can't die, can't eat, can't drink, can't sleep._

"You're here, aren't you? You can't just return to school after kidnapping me."

_Then how do I beat him? He's a freaking zombie. On a deeper level than _I_ am, and I thought that was impossible._

"Alice, our youngest and smallest member!" Clapping was heard, as there was movement on the far end. My eyes strained and adjusted. And there was Wend, sitting idly on some crates and reading a familiar volume from a sack.

_He simply exists. He's used to everything. That's his weakness. What is his existence fuelled by?_

"Wend, give me those back. You're not allowed to see into Tsuna's future," I stated flatly, eyes flickering around, because where was Jared?

_Nothing but the downfall of his former comrades._

"And you are? Tut, tut, Alice, such hubris!" Wend mockingly waved a volume in front of my eyes. "I think you know the truth about me, don't you?"

"Yeah, Wend. How you stopped several former Brighteyes from their mission by using their previous lives and crushing their spirit out of them. Why did you do that?"

"It's fun, of course. That someone else is feeling pain other than me."

_Kufufu… He's lived too long. That's why if you give him hope, something that opposes his reason for existence, he will stall. He won't know what to do._

I frowned. "Many people are feeling pain, Wend. You aren't the only one who does."

_He'll doubt._

My mind was whirring out half-baked ideas to get that damn sack back. I needed that, damn it.

_He'll stall, and he'll have to retreat for a couple of days. That's all you need, isn't it? After that, use all the time in the world to stop him. He's not that much of a threat, after all. Kufufu, what's with that look? That's how to beat him, _Alice_. Who said you had to beat him physically? You're hanging around muscle brains like that skylark too much. I thought you were smart._

Huh. What Mukuro failed to mention was _what_ there could be that could waver Wend's resolve. I didn't have much proof, though maybe if I appealed to his more human side?

Jared! He's watched Jared grow up. Maybe he has some compassion for him… Then when he gets confused I can snatch the bag and drag him somewhere like Africa where he's far away from the Inheritance ceremony.

That idea was as bad as a half-baked hash brown. I wasn't much of a strategist though.

…Maybe it'll work on the slightest bit of chance there is?

_How do you know so much? _

"Wend, where's Jared?" I called out, adrenaline humming through my veins. I felt more awake than usual, which was saying something.

_Kufufu~ Let's just say he and I are more similar than we would admit_

_And it struck me how bright and odd that red eye was… it glowed in the dark just like ours did—_

"Jared? He's—recuperating, you can say." Wend smiled.

I frowned.

"Recuperating?"

"I had no use for him after all this. His wounds from that Vongola Guardian," Hibari I thought to myself, "were not favourable. I told him about his brother, that's all."

Red. That boy I had bet so long ago. That had _died_ so long ago.

"That little boy, Jared, believed me for so long that I had his dear older _brother_ kept safe somewhere, that I was trying to search for him, that I knew where he is but was unable to reach him, that he was in a coma and I had the best medical resources to treat him, and all he had to do was keep working for me. A simple hologram in that medical room worked like a charm." He smiled at me, hopping off his crates and placing the book in his hand back into the sack and walked forward.

I had a bad feeling.

They were usually right.

"_Where is he?"_ I demanded, raising my gun even if it was useless. Wend stopped in his tracks, his face amused. Both of us knew my action was futile.

"You know, he came back to me begging me to tell him that what you said wasn't true. I just said not to believe in the Brighteyes, because isn't your brother right there? Switched on the hologram, and he was all obedient to become my servant again when I threatened to switch off the machines that kept his dear… _brother_ alive."

Thoughts of the idiot ten years later giggling like a magpie on crack as he shoved new video tapes of ballets into my hand floated to the top of my head as I readjusted my position to one that allowed me to attack or _bolt_ at any given second.

Wend noted this with a head tilt and a lopsided smile.

"I reinforced that with treaties of his older brother. How he _trusted _me, and how _betrayed_ I felt that Jared didn't do that when I was trying my hardest. He bowed down in front of me quicker than I could snap my fingers!" He laughed before giggling a little. "But now that he's useless I led him to that room where that hologram of his brother was kept. I switched on the lights. Then I switched the hologram off. You should have seen his face as he kept screaming for his brother! It was so funny!"

His giggles slowly turned to full-blown laughter, as if it _was_ something funny to laugh at. A good joke.

The most frightening thing was that his laughter wasn't insane.

Wend was sane. Very sane. He truly thought that Jared's situation was hilarious.

"_Where is he?_" I reiterated, as I took a step sideways. Wend playfully took a step sideways too. Good. I continued, and we walked around in a slow circle, rotated really, as he continued talking.

Not about Jared's location.

"You know, it reminded me of his brother's face. They really are siblings, huh…" Wend smiled, leftover chuckles still bubbling up from his earlier laughter. "I guess you know how horribly his face was burnt when he was washed down the river, right?"

I tensed a little.

"Poisoned, burnt, or drowned. No-one could really identify which he died of. I only told Jared he was washed away, and his face was too burnt to recognise his features."

Childish glee was on Wend's face.

"It was all three! Good job on identifying all of them. He did all that to himself, you know. I made him put on gasoline soaked clothes, saying it was training before switching on a monitor where there was a camera trained on Jared. Rishid was so scared when he saw that there was a bomb attached to the bottom of his pillow and I was holding the detonator."

Rishid… Red. Wend had _murdered_ him?

My horrified look wasn't lost.

"No, no. Don't misunderstand me. Didn't I tell you he did it by himself? I told him to take the poison. He did. I told him to walk into the bonfire. He did. Then he ran into the river himself, because the pain was too much and he'd rather drown than have the poison or the fire kill him. All because of a fake detonator and cleverly laid laser attached to his beloved little brother's pillow. The official cause of death is suicide you know, and its right."

He… he didn't honestly think that was alright, did he?

"Don't you understand the pain of an older sibling? Jared was Rishid's only living family!" My words weren't reaching Wend. I tried another tactic. "Just like you and Elena, he didn't want to feel like he failed to protect his brother."

I would do the same for Jack, for the not-so-little Emily. Why would he rip open families like that? It, I shivered, didn't seem like the first time he did that either.

Wend's face turned from happy to blank.

"How do you know about Elena?"

He had stopped walking, playing around with me. He walked forward, and I fired two warning shots near his legs. He stopped, listening to the sound of the guns fade away in the warehouse before talking again, his eyes landing onto me Vongola Ring.

"Alayne, of course. Meddlesome."

"Why would you do that to them? Elena—" I was suddenly cut off.

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TALK ABOUT ELENA!"

His shout echoed around the warehouse, and I was shocked to silence. I didn't let that show on my face or my posture though. There was no space for that. I continued ruthlessly.

"Elena wouldn't like seeing her older brother doing this type of—"

"And how would you know _anything_ about Elena? How would you know the _pain_ of living," he scrunched up his fist, "to feel that disappointment every day of living knowing there is another, and another yet in front of you? In a way dying while you knew that you _DID_ protect them is a blessing! That you're not a _failure_!" He yelled at the end.

"Imprisoned by knowing death, knowing that there was something there that was given up because of your own weakness? To live every day in regret that you wanted to die? Laugh at the irony that wanting to die made me live for eternity instead?"

I had placed myself right in front of my books now. I heft the sack up over my shoulder, but Wend didn't notice.

It seems like my attempt didn't work.

I should retreat, and try after awhile. I felt for the place where Hibari had thrown Wend into the wall the night before. There, a dent. That bit of the wall should be weaker than the rest.

A flame enhanced kick, and the screeching metal knocked Wend out of his rant and he looked at me, his eyes angry.

"No, you don't." His arms raised up, grey flame shimmering at the end of them. I sprinted out, the books banging heavily on my back.

"HAWK!" I screamed, and with a whoosh of wings, Hawk was there, letting me practically run straight onto his back while I heard Falcon screech as he scratched at Wend, distracting him. I flew away, and at a safer distance I called Falcon back.

We headed back for my apartment.

Landing back on the balcony, I hugged Hawk and Falcon goodbye before retracting my flame from them into a glowing ball on top of my head. Then shrank and disappeared back into their boxes, and I wearily trudged into the kitchen to be amused (however dully) at the breakfast spread at what, at noon?

I ate breakfast anyway, with Grey popping in and greeting me with a sunny smile that I needed so much right then. After _that_ I didn't know what to say to Wend to make him doubt himself.

How could Wend be so pitiful and hateful all at once?

I ate a sausage, marvelling at how mundane the action was compared to what I had done all morning. My mind couldn't help but replay my conversations with Enma and Wend…

"Jared!"

I rushed, shoving one last hash brown into my mouth as I rushed to the computer room.

* * *

The hospital was as white and unfeeling as usual. Jared was in a hospital bed, staring at a cheap curtain emptily, his leg in a cast and his neck in a brace. There were bandages everywhere I could see too, and his head was half-wrapped. But none of that mattered.

Jared was… gone.

The words that I had been about to say, things like 'are you going back to the Varia now' and 'what are you going to do?' and 'what are Wend's motives' seemed so impossible to ask in the face of such loss.

He wasn't fully there anymore.

So I settled the fruit basket (Grey pushed it on me saying it was manners) on the table near his bed, noting that it wasn't a single room with a disapproval. Going out and motioning to a nurse, who directed me to a doctor, I asked him to give Jared a single room. He protested, but a flash of a black credit card shut him up. He did so, I gave him money, and I noted with worry that Jared didn't even seem to register the change in rooms.

I sat down in the comfortable chair they had provided me with, and I looked at him, the drip in his arm marking the time as the day faded away.

* * *

It was merely luck I went to the toilet, which was _downstairs_ for non-hospital patients, near the emergency room that I heard the shouts. Familiar shouts.

"Doctor, will he be alright?" Someone yelled, and I had a problem placing the familiar voice.

Then I realised. Ryohei. But he didn't put, an EXTREEEEMEEE! In there for once. What was going on?

I went into the corridor, and the doctor didn't even acknowledging Ryohei as he shouted orders for more nurses and an operation room to be ready _now_ he didn't care if there wasn't any space he needed it cleared—

Yamamoto, drenched in blood and his face clenched in pain.

Gokudera was there, his hands shaking as he fumbled for his phone and gripped a cigarette ineffectually with his teeth (it wasn't lit, but I wasn't sure Gokudera had steady enough hands to light it anyway). "That base-ball _idiot," _he muttered fearfully his face white.

Slowly, the people trickled in.

Kyoko and surprisingly, Hana arrived, her face drawn and worried, her eyes yet again questioning _is it another mafia attack?_ I soothed her, nodding a little, but telling her that this time, she couldn't do anything to help. Hana, not really understanding what was happening, soothed Kyoko, which soothed Ryohei as well who didn't like seeing Kyoko agitated.

He pulled her aside to tell her a serious thank you, no bluster for once, which made her look at him weirdly (in a different light, I guess).

I couldn't even muster enough energy to smile.

Kyoko and Hana were ushered away, before the whole baseball team rushed into the hospital waiting room. It was up to me again to explain to them an edited version of what happened

'_that person who escaped prison three weeks ago came to our school and threatened Yamamoto. He was attacked, and we don't know if it isn't fatal'_

They stayed, but left just as quickly as the nurses frowned at them and near-yelled at them to leave because it wasn't visiting hours, that it was nearly too late.

Ryohei didn't move. Gokudera just kept scrabbling with his phone, having finished a call. I moved next to them, and my glare sent them skittering away. Gokudera gave me an appreciative glance, before calling another number. It was clear he called who, because Chrome came rushing in, her face white and the question 'is he alright?'

I shook my head negative and looked at the 'IN OPERATION' sign above the door.

"J-juudaime," Gokudera muttered shakily, "come to the hospital. Yamamo—the baseball _idiot_ got attacked." He ended the call, before standing up, muttering _idiot_ way too many times.

I kept silent, my back to the wall, my arms crossed as the rest of the Shimon family filed in. Rauji with Lambo, Adelheid, Aoba, _Kaoru_. The one who attacked Yamamoto in the first place.

It was the first time I ever wanted to ruin the plot. I willed my face into stone, and my legs into blocks of steel.

I will not move.

The plot will go on.

After another twenty minutes of this, with unassuring muted yells of doctors for more blood, Tsuna came rushing in with Reborn. "Juudaime!" Gokudera cried, as if having Tsuna there would somehow ensure Yamamoto's survival.

Tsuna took a glance at us, his eyes widening at me on the side before seeing our expressions and assuming the worst.

"Where's Yamamoto?" He shouted, his eyes panicked.

"In the emergency room!" Ryohei replied, his voice loud. There was only one lit emergency room right then, and Tsuna didn't even pause to force open the door. "Juudaime?" Gokudera called in confusion when Tsuna successfully pried open the door with his fingers alone.

"Yamamoto?" Tsuna cried, his eyes searching.

What he saw shocked him into silence. He didn't even resist when the doctors pushed him out.

"Hey you! What are you doing?"

"We're in the middle of an operation!"

"He's in a very dangerous condition! You _cannot_ come in!"

They shoved him out, and he landed flat, jarring his tailbone as he lost his balance. Through the windows of the door, the shadows of the doctors stripped their gloves and donned new ones, already heading back to try and stabilise Yamamoto yet again as the door finally slid shut.

"Please wait outside."

Gokudera flocked to Tsuna's side."Juudaime!" He fussed, trying to get him sitting down on a real chair. We all looked at each other, seeing as mostly anyone who knew the real origins of the attack were here, we all migrated to the waiting room.

It was empty.

But it was after hours after all. I stood guard at the entrance of the room, and all of the nurses and doctors that saw me refrained from trying to shoo the people inside the waiting room, resting. I could hear faint conversation in the room. I could hear Chrome choke on a few sobs.

Yamamoto had been kind to her too, after all.

I motioned her closer, and gave her a tissue. After she blew her nose, she tugged me inside, right into the moment where I wanted to avoid.

"I tried to heal Yamamoto's wounds with Garyuu's sun flames but… the wounds were too deep." He seemed to be reliving it, as his face was unnaturally pale, his eyes wide. He paused.

"I'm sure you're the reason he hasn't died yet, Ryohei. You have done well," I said, my voice a bit dry from not using it for a few hours. Ryohei winced, but nodded.

"We need to ask the baseball team what they know. Wasn't Mizuno with Yamamoto?"

"Yeah," Kaoru said, voice deep and with a lack of inflection. Adelheid glanced over. "He and I were playing Catch ball yesterday, but I left before him."

Yesterday. It was already yesterday.

Midnight had already passed.

I manoeuvred Chrome to sit beside Tsuna, before standing over him protectively. His head was still bowed.

I put a hand on his shoulder, before offering him a tissue too. He didn't use though. He gripped it in his hands, twisting it, bunching it into his fists.

"I see, so Yamamoto must have been attacked when he was alone…" Ryohei said, trusting Kaoru's words way too easily.

Gokudera nearly burst at that point.

"That _IDIOT!_" Gokudera said, chewing the end of his cigarette to bits in frustration, his eyes always flickering back towards the corridor where the emergency room was. "Letting his guard down!" He spat, looking down.

There was a bit of silence after his outburst.

Then Adelheid took the lead.

"Considering they were strong enough…"

I didn't want to hear this. I strode back to my spot in the hallway, inside the room, yet near the outside. It was a bit darker outside. The guest hallways didn't need light after all, but the emergency hallway at the end of the dark corridor was blazing with light.

I nearly laughed.

_The light at the end of the tunnel… Yamamoto, don't you _dare_ go there before me._

I knew he was going to survive. But…

Yamamoto had actually looked like he was going to _die_. And this happened before I checked the school, which was stupid of me. I still didn't know if Wend had told the Shimon anything.

I didn't know if my presence, or Wend's presence had changed enough so that Yamamoto… just might die.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I snapped open my phone and called a number.

"Anise. I know you can do this. Get Byakuran here, to Namimori hospital in two days." I paused. "No, I know you can do it. This is crucial, a plot hole of sorts. The whole Mafia is watching Byakuran right now, but I need him here… Yes, I need this. It'll be done? Good."

I snapped my phone shut.

Only thing I could do now was to wait.

The Shimon filed out of the room, glancing at me suspiciously before Adelheid friendlily mentioned that they were talking about some Vongola secret that they weren't privy to. That I should probably join them.

I shook my head, and bowed a slightly mocking goodbye to them as they left with the culprit we were so desperately searching. They deserved that respect after all, for being such good actors.

I only headed into the waiting room when I heard the declaration I was waiting for. I arrived in time to see Tsuna looking up for the first time he had sat down.

"I'll ask the Ninth to open the ceremony. The culprit is bound to attack another one of my friends again." He looked up, his eyes serious as looked unseeingly forward. "And I won't forgive that. Whoever did that to Yamamoto…" He gripped his fingers tightly. "I'll catch them, no matter what it takes!" He looked up, frown on his face, oddly reminiscent of his Hyper Dying Will self. "I am going to the Inheritance Ceremony!"

I smiled.

"I think Yamamoto should be out soon," I said softly. "Let's wait outside the surgery room."

They all rose and waited for Tsuna to pass before walking behind him towards Yamamoto's room. The spot behind Tsuna's left arm was empty, but no-one chose to fill it.

We waited for half an hour. Yamamoto's dad arrived then, his face flushed and choked as he stared at the door in front of him before collapsing into himself.

But not before thanking us for staying there, supporting his Takeshi for him. Tsuna's eyes flashed with guilt when he said that, but kept silent. It seemed like it was morning when an exhausted doctor said that they had stabilised him… but he would probably never walk again.

"His condition is severe. The worst should be today and tomorrow. I should mention this first, but even though we were able to save his life, and there's a good chance he will never be able to walk again."

_But I've called Byakuran to fix it, _I tried to convince myself. _Byakuran would fix Yamamoto good as new, healthy and happy again. He'll be fine._

I turned around and left, ignoring their plans for the Inheritance Ceremony.

I had another person to tell.

Irritated eyes glared at me over the gate. "What is it now, Sunglasses?"

"A student was attacked on Nami-chu." Hibari's eyes sharpened, and black silk pyjamas rustled as he walked fully out the doorway. "Yamamoto Takeshi. The culprit will appear at Tsunayoshi Sawada, the Vongola Tenth's, Inheritance Ceremony. Since I'm sure you dumped your invite, I've come to tell you to find it again."

Hibari simply just turned around, pulling out a phone and calling someone in response. Kusakabe appeared half an hour later. It was beginning to light around now, and I stared blearily at what seemed like… a girl suit? Kusakabe was holding it to me with a kind smile in his eye.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the formal dress thing.

I was shivering in my blue shorts anyway.

"Grey," I called as Hibari took the suit that was proffered to him by Kusakabe and gratefully accepting mine (trying not to get creeped out by _how the heck did he know my measurements_) "Come to Hibari-san's house with the limo. We're going to the Inheritance Ceremony."

I waited patiently for five minutes as Hibari went inside to change and presumably find where he put that invite.

Then Grey came, and I climbed in and changed clothes myself. Folding my previous clothes neatly in the corner, Hibari came out in a suit and a wrinkled envelope in hand, the Vongola Ring and Roll on his two fingers.

Hibari and Kusakabe slid in next to us, silent. Hibari's attitude were mostly unaffected by what I told him. Kusakabe gave me a cordial smile.

They acted as if there was nothing wrong with the world at all. I found myself relaxing some, before dozing and sleeping hugging a pillow Grey had put into the car (the man was an angel, seriously).

Today was way too depressing.

At least sleep let everything go away for a little while...

* * *

I was woken by Grey, shaken gently as he put my own immaculate invitation (but that was only because he kept it) into my hand. Hibari and Kusakabe were already outside, facing a few intimidating men in black suits. They seemed vaguely familiar – high ranking people in the Vongola family.

Hibari was staring at them.

"Show your invites," the men said, slight leer in his voice as he peered at Hibari and Kusakabe, before smirking at me. Then he looked properly at me.

Or more specifically, my eyes.

Seriously, I was kind of getting sick of this.

"Brighteye-sama! Please, go through, leaving all your weapons behind!" He jumped away from me, leaving a wide path for me to walk through. I shrugged, hugging Grey goodbye and making a show of leaving my guns behind (while keeping my chopsticks in my sleeves) and waited for Hibari behind the line of big mafia.

Hibari yawned when they asked for the invite again.

"You mean this?" he dangled the crinkled, tea-stained invite in his hand. The man nearly blew up in anger at the lack of respect.

"You!"

I put a hand on his arm. He looked at me in confusion.

"Look at his hand," I said quietly.

He looked and paled.

"The Vongola Cloud Guardian?" He looked at my hand unconsciously as well, and paled even further. "The Star Guardian."

"Yes. So move it."

Hibari was vaguely irritated as he moved through the lines that parted respectfully for him. Kusakabe, however, was restricted access, but Hibari blinked mock-sleepily at him before moving forward. Looking back, Kusakabe and Grey were conversing quietly as the went back into the limo. I smiled a little as I fell in step behind Hibari, leaving the stares and whispers behind, before putting a glare nearly as sharp as Hibari's.

"He wasn't even worth biting to death," Hibari said to me, unimpressed by the large castle the Ninth had hired for the Inheritance Ceremony.

It made me wonder about his background.

"I know," I said simply. "That's why I took care of it."

Hibari smirked and said nothing, just headed forward with me next to him until somehow, he came to the front of the castle and met the others. They stared at him in surprise, and me next to him. They had probably wondered where I went. Tsuna goggled.

"Hibari-san! Alice!" He yelled, face relieved.

Reborn broke the silence, staring at _us_ speculatively.

"It's rare for you to come on your own."

Hibari's face turned stony again. "A student was attacked on our school grounds. I will bit the culprit to death."

Gokudera walked up to me, and put Lambo into my arms, muttering 'good riddance'. I was kind of offended (because I was girl I had to take care of brats?) until I realised how much quieter Lambo was in _my_ arms than in Gokudera's.

"Behave well today, Lambo?" I asked him. Lambo looked up at me, before trying to smile annoyingly (at which I frowned and he straightened up).

"Okay, Alice-nee."

"Now all the Vongola Guardians are here!" Ryohei exclaimed happily. "You two are the people we can count on!" He exclaimed at us faking enthusiasm as he gave us both a thumbs up. Hibari was very unimpressed. I deadpanned. Tsuna just smiled with him.

"Yes!"

My glare swept over the whole field in front of the mansion, noting everyone, noting their positions, their usefulness…

I didn't stop noticing how Tsuna's face fell right after every smile, or how Chrome protectively hugged her trident. How Gokudera stood protectively near the fake Yamamoto, or how Yamamoto smiled so naturally… yet so stiff.

Hibari refused to fall in step behind Tsuna. I had no such qualms.

I fell into the place behind the fake Yamamoto, where I usually was, hugging Lambo. Chrome stood close next to me, and Ryohei was behind Gokudera on Tsuna's right hand side.

"Okay. We're going in," Reborn said, unsmiling.

No perma-smirk today.

Tsuna nodded, and walked forward towards the castle, his steps unwavering and not looking back.

He didn't need to.

We were there.

* * *

**Yo!**

**MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAAPPY NEW YEEARRR! **

**See you all next year, yo! 2013 here I COME! And gah. My last highschool year.**

**EXAMS DAMNIT!**

**But this is not the time to think about this stuff! Nice long chappie today. Thank you for all your kind reviews! I hope you review this chapter and tell me what you think. Two weeks only today! Gehehehe… INHERITANCE CEREMONY HAD STARTED!**

**Next chapter – fights.**


	57. can't be heroic

Strange things tended to happen around the very unstrange Tsuna. But that was the norm – after all, he _was_ the protagonist, strange as it sounds. As protagonist, he didn't have to mind plot-holes, because somehow he would jump over them with no problem. Strange things? BOOF done. Danger to his friends? Light some flames on his gloves and BOOF done. No courage to face reality?

Reborn bullet and BOOF done.

Somehow, Tsuna always just came out on top of everything, you know? So I guess it wouldn't be exactly strange for me to always notice how things just weren't didn't work sometimes.

There were just too many people around this place for Enma to have come into this all by himself and not get attacked by the Mafia around this place. They were battle hardened, and had utmost loyalty towards the Vongola. After all, everyone knew the Vongola's power.

You know, that rumour that if you betray the Vongola you won't succeed in anything in life? I researched that a little.

Vongola treats any traitor like absolute trash. They don't cleanly kill people, not always. They let them go, and then crush their spirits out of them as anything they do will fail often through no fault of their own. After years of this, even the most resilient of souls were pushed the the brink. No-one would touch one that Vongola had 'tainted'.

So, with so many supporters from loyal families, and the Vongola itself – it wasn't nothing to _sneeze_ at – how did Enma escape? Flying? It didn't matter to people who used Sky flames.

I understood how they broke into the vault, but _escaping?_

We waited outside in silence to make our grand entrance. After all, the passing of the title Boss was the biggest things in Mafia, especially if you're the biggest Famiglia. As less guests were outside, and most had filed inside, we heard someone tell Tsuna respectfully that 'we were to walk in now'.

Tsuna did without any hesitation at all.

It wasn't _exactly_ silent in the room. Although the Mafia were disciplined, it couldn't really contain the clinks of shoes (and therefore hidden weapons as rubber soles don't clink when they stepped onto marble) rustles of clothing and whatnot, but when Tsuna passed them, they all straightened and memorised his face.

Our faces, actually. I could see that funny guard from outside gulping in one of the third rows (I wasn't tall enough to look over their heads) to realise we really were guardians. Funny guy.

When we reached the Ninth, the crowd closed us in. Hibari, who was the very last one and standing in the middle, was visibly trying to restrain himself from becoming violent.

It was kind of claustrophobic though. There were people everywhere that looked tough, and we were supposed to find our enemies in this type of crowd?

The Ninth was smiling, and a stern eye over the crown made them immediately quiet. I felt Hibari tense up next to me – maybe it was the acknowledgement that _this was a person not to cross with_.

I haven't really seen the Ninth much. Really, I think I ever saw him once, and that was that tiny glimpse of him at a party years ago. I can't really remember which party, but it was a party all the same. The one I met Dino in, I guess? Was I there for the Gola Mosca thing? Ah, my memory was becoming a bit hazy these days…

Just as that thought hit, I thought I saw a glimpse of yellow hair in the crowd. Discreetly going on my tiptoes, I scanned the heads.

It _was_ Dino!

I gave a manic grin, and Dino reciprocated. Then I quickly ducked down again, as I nearly lost my balance. It wouldn't do for the enigmatic 'mysterious dangerous blah blah blah strong' Brighteye to faceplant from tripping over their own feet.

The ceremony was pretty long.

It made sense. How else would Enma break into a seven-flame protected safe with a twenty-number code which also had a retinal scan if the ceremony was only like, five minutes, if the manga was to be believed?

Tsuna and, well, us were supposed to be shown off here anyway

I let the words wash over me, as I eyed the ceiling, before stepping backwards a bit and standing next to Hibari. The Ninth was giving a speech, and actual _speech_ you know, unlike what the manga had predicted. But that was to be expected. Shifting Lambo, I 'accidentally' bumped Hibari's elbow, made easy because he had stuck his hands into his pockets.

"I, as the Ninth of the Vongola Family has seen…"

_Blah. Blah blah blah. Blah! Blah blaaaaah blah. _Nod. Serious face. Pose a little. Continue talking.

I sighed as I rubbed my elbow.

Bumping Hibari's elbow was painful. His elbow was much harder than a elbow should have been… maybe he already had his tonfa out underneath his sleeves. Probably.

He gave me an irritated glance. I, kind of relieved that he was directing his irritation at me and not exploding at the mafia crowds instead, flickered my glance at the ceiling. I remembered that much at least. The Shimon had set up explosives to make the parts of the ceiling crash down, as well as parts of the walls.

I couldn't really tell anyone else at this point, and I couldn't have told them sooner. If there weren't any explosives, how would Enma and co. sneak out and get the real vial of Vongola's 'sin'? That little bottle of blood the Ninth was showing around wasn't real, obvious because the Ninth wouldn't risk the real bottle like that.

Hibari was confused, before he glanced at the ceiling himself, his arms readjusting around the things he was gripping. Now I was sure he was holding tonfa.

"_blah blah blah_…" The Ninth finally paused, and I took a second to revel in surprise. Did the Ninth even breathe in when he gave that fifteen minute speech? The Ninth's eyes had softened. "I pass this on to you, Decimo," he said in Italian before repeating in Japanese.

There was the bottle of blood.

Tsuna looked at it, reached out, there was a flash of movement to the side and I whirled around tugging Hibari nearer Ryohei when—

A whole string of explosions went from either side of the ceiling.

And there was _pandemonium_.

All I heard were screams and ringing in my ears, as the the left side of the ceiling collapsed in large marble blocks, crushing some people under them, killing some instantly while some others were pinned. Dino's group, on my right, was facing a creaking ceiling, as webs crawled through the columns that held the great hall up. I saw Dino was shouting at his family, screaming through his coughing for them to cover us or escape. But I couldn't hear him. I couldn't really hear anything. The explosions had been too loud, and my ears were ringing.

Some families were picking themselves up, and helping others. The Ninth's guardians had already surrounded Tsuna and the Ninth, and Tsuna was staring at a cracked bottle of blood – sin – in horror while Ninth explained something to him. Gokudera was up to releasing the second stage of his Sistema C.A.I., Uri snarling while Chrome was huge-eyed and terrified, clutching at her trident as fake Yamamoto flickered but steadied.

I made my way over to her, and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder even as I blocked my nose from the smoke, and gave an apologetic bow to Hibari who was glaring at me over at Ryohei's side. It wasn't as if I was trying to protect _him_. Hibari pulverised that piece of concrete falling at _Ryohei_.

Oh well. Grumpy was grumpy, I suppose.

That all happened in two seconds.

The next second, everything was still. The culprits were in an uncollapsed portion of the hallway, and something was very strange.

Enma was staring at Tsuna with dead eyes, even as he said something too soft for me to hear, but apparently something Tsuna heard perfectly. My ears were still ringing, but I forced my vision to steady when Enma crushed the _real_ bottle of blood and his hand and roared out something even I could hear.

"…the Vongola Primo CAST OUT SHIMON LIKE TRASH!"

Tsuna looked shocked for a second, before straightening up, eyes blazing, mouthing something I could now hear snippets of.

Probably something on the lines of "I know Vongola Primo would never do something like that!"

Enma's Ring, the Shimon Ring, had started to awaken, and a strange glow was starting to emanate from his finger, looking like words or circular pulses of light. This was followed by the other rings starting to glow, even while Tsuna and Enma still talked.

But it wasn't all talking.

Some Vongola allies had sneaked up and attacked Enma, thinking him helpless – the _idiots_ who couldn't recognise strength levels, of course – but his family blocked their attacks from reaching Enma.

Wend. He was there. I shook my head, trying to free the ringing in my ears before nearly choking on dust.

That was the good thing about manga- it was always so ideal. And you could hear everything a person says even if they're fifty metres away, there's people still screaming in pain, people are fighting, and what they're saying is practically a whisper almost.

I certainly couldn't, which was why I did _not_ pick up the cue to fight. It was just like

'talk talk talk FIGHT FOR THE VONGOLA!'

Well, not really.

Enma was really calm, as he held up his ring, and mentioned something about 'the flames of the earth'. And then everyone was in battle stance, and I was left blinking by myself.

Someone clapped me on the back.

Dino.

"You alright?" he asked through an eye full of blood from a gash on his forehead. I frowned at him.

"Are _you_ alright?" He gave a short chuckle, before nodding. I nodded too. "My ears are still ringing, but I'm fine. You better tell everyone to leave. Now." I grasped his arm tightly, trying to get me point across because it looked like Enma was going to use his Flames… _now. _Dino was a Boss of one of the three major families. Most would listen to him without question. The I pulled his arm towards me, and put Lambo in his arms.

Lambo stopped crying immediately, and stared at me in confusion. Dino just set his mouth in a small harsh line and nodded at me.

"Okay. RETREAT!" He yelled, turning away and most people who heard him in the nearby vicinity retreated. He himself followed afterwards, even as Lambo's eyes followed me.

I knew Lambo's tears were fake. He had grown up around explosions, his best friend was a ticking time bomb, his best frenemy was a dynamite freak, and his self-proclaimed rival had a passion for explosions. He had come from a family of assassins. In this world, the youngest to ever have a successful professional kill was three years old (excluding Arcobaleno).

I turned away, knowing he was in safe hands and watched him retreat from the corners of my eyes.

Just enough.

Enma blinked then, and slowly raised his hand. With a flick of his fingers, Ryohei and Gokudera were thrown into the walls from their positions behind Tsuna enough to make them _crack_. Ryohei gave a grunt, but the Sun flames that covered his torso and head made me worry for him less.

_Gokudera_ however… I gave an inarticulate cry, as I tried to scramble at him, who was bleeding from his nose. He wasn't indestructible like me, or Hibari, or Mukuro… He was weaker than Yamamoto, physically, and see what had happened to him_—_

"Gokudera!" I yelled wheeling around, even as Tsuna still stood shocked at what happened. I was releasing grey flames from my Ring – not fast enough – even as the next second Enma's raised hand twitched, and his fingers splayed out, pointing at Chrome and Hibari.

I was still near Chrome, and I was able to clutch at Chrome when we floated a second, before suddenly a force threw us up into the ceiling. I twisted. Chrome would _not_ be able to handle this with her bone structure.

Well good for her. The Brighteye shock absorber is ready for use!

I grunted as I could actually feel my bones creaking from strain. _That_ was how much pressure was on us. At least I had twisted enough so that I had been the one who yet another crater in the ceiling. The only thing that saved us from broken bones was because the ceiling had already been weak and cracked. If it was because of that I didn't 'die' again.

Beneath us, the Yamamoto illusion disappeared. I saw Adelheid scoff.

"As we suspected, Yamamoto Takeshi was an illusion," I heard her faintly say. "Did you think we wouldn't see through that?" She flicked that lock of hair that covered one of her eyes out of her face.

"Tsuna-kun… I almost believed you," Enma said, when suddenly the force pinning Chrome and I into the ceiling lessened and started pulling us, almost gently, into the air. "But in the end…"

The other allies of the Vongola were watching in near shocked silence – the Ninth was down, the new boss was facing off against a new power and _losing_. But with Dino's retreat signal, none of them really knew what to do. Attack? Defend?

But nearly all of them knew that they were _waaaay_ out of their league. I pitied them for being subject to the impossible demands made to a protagonist of a shounen manga.

Gokudera and Ryohei also floated out of their respective walls, as Tsuna's mind finally caught up to the fact that Enma wanted to kill him, and he was hurting his friends.

"No, Enma! What are you doing? STOP!" He cried as his gloves lit and he raced towards the closest of his Family in the grips of Enma's play with gravity. He had only gone a few steps towards Ryohei when Enma clenched his fist.

All five of us were pulled along, barely conscious as it was, towards each other in the middle of the room to collide before making us collapse into a pile on the ground.

Dramatic, much?

"Do you know why I haven't attacked you yet, Tsuna?" Enma's lacklustre voice asked, his face blank. "I wanted you to taste the pain that the first Shimon felt from Primo."

Tsuna stared at us on the ground with shock, and barely disguised anger.

"ENMA!" He yelled, fisting his hands.

Us, as his family, all knew how he lost his X Burner contacts in the future. It was basically his cure all in the future. Difficult battle? X Burner! We all knew that Tsuna, as confident as he can _sometimes_ be, he wasn't confident in firing the X Burner without contacts.

Tsuna was both fearless and a coward like that.

I groaned, as Chrome pulled herself from me and tried to help me up in worry even when she was getting up with shaky arms herself. I declined the offer, before wobbling into a kind of half push-up stance, staring at the ground whining in my head about my _poor bruised ribs…_

Big brother first, of course.

Ryohei kneeled up, sending the rest of us cursory glances of concern, sending a quick flash of Sun waves over us. Chrome sent a shaky lip wobble (not nearly a smile), I scowled, Gokudera stirred and Hibari didn't even deign to reply and just hauled himself up. Ryohei smiled grimly, before facing Enma with a determined frown.

"We're not done, Kozato!" He yelled, as loud as always. He lit his Flame.

One day, Kyoko had told me that her parents still had nightmares of Ryohei as a baby because he had such a strong pair of lungs that the next next door neighbours complained. He was putting them to good use.

Chrome sent a determined look forward, her trident suddenly lengthening as she cast an illusion, and I helped Gokudera lever himself up with that dynamite loader on his arm. He gave a scowl of thanks. I gave him a scowl of concern. I had a big enough ball of Star Flames now, and I sent the glowing ball over my head and stopped the flow of them.

"You think it'll be that easy?" Gokudera growled out, clutching his stomach.

Hibari had already stood up, unlike the rest of us who were still on our knees in various degrees of pain. His eyes were shadowed, head tilted downwards. He looked at me. I gave him a nod.

_We are okay_.

Oh how I envied Tsuna right now. Being thrown around like a baked potato wasn't fun.

I looked around though. The Hall was nearly empty, save for a few corpses underneath some rubble. I tried not to be too disturbed, or saddened. They had been people too… I set my eyes forward, and reached for my chopsticks. Two in each hand.

Hibari looked up, about to step forward and launch an attack when Enma's hand stretched out again. It was laughable how slow the action seemed.

Enma was playing with us.

"I'm ready," he replied blandly.

And suddenly I felt like a ten elephants jumped on my back simultaneously. Any progress made towards the far-off goal of standing up was made null, and we fell flat as the marble floor creaked and cracked underneath us.

Thinking back on it, it was pretty funny how Hibari went from standing to flat in less than a second.

To Ryohei's credit, he covered us in Sun flames so that we didn't die from the excess pressure.

The pressure was enough to crack our _Rings_… though it may have been because Enma was focusing on them. I think Lambo's Lightning Flames would have come handy around now. Reinforcement was a Lightning attribute. Rejuvenation was Sun's.

Oh well. It worked well enough.

Chrome gave a loud cry of pain, just as Enma added the pressure and suddenly there _was_ a crater on the floor. Even Ryohei seemed to have trouble breathing.

And the Vongola Rings shattered.

"No! The Vongola Rings!" said one of Ninth's Guardians.

Gee. We were being tortured, and that was what he says? I felt so appreciated.

…I couldn't breathe.

"Everyone!" Tsuna shrieked, his voice climbing a few octaves, before he couldn't stand to watch anymore. The spark of hope that had been there when we had been getting up was gone. He shot forward, gloves propelling him forward into direct confrontation with Enma. "Why? Why would someone like you do this?!"

Enma's returning gaze was hard.

"It's your fault."

The next thing I knew was that I was breathing a sigh of relief as all the pressure was gone. Ryohei's Sun flames were all gone. Ryohei himself was conscious, but just barely, as he breathed heavily. I breathed heavier too, in utter _joy_ at not having to breathe through tonnes of pressure on my back. Hibari was already endeavouring to try and get up.

I breathed. And shrugged off the pain and stood up in one swoop, before getting a bit giddy at the 'blood' rushing through me head.

Heaven knows I don't actually need it. Haha.

In the few minutes that I took to stand up, Tsuna had already been flung onto the floor, pinned there by Enma's power. Tsuna's eyes widened at me. I smiled at him shakily.

Enma's eyes flickered to me, but I ignored him.

"Tsuna, we're all still alive," I managed to say. Somehow. My body surprises my brain sometimes. Tsuna's whole demeanour relaxed. Just a little, and he managed a tiny smile of his own, even as he struggled underneath gravity.

Just then, the door slammed open and Squalo, Belphegor, Mammon, Levi and Dino came through, only to be immediately trapped with ice by Adelheid, and a sharp reprimand –"Outsiders should stay out of this."

I looked at Dino, and mouthed "Lambo?"

He gave a smile, mouthed "Safe" before frowning in worry again. I think I looked a mess.

Enma frowned.

"Brighteye… Alice. Do you still insist on believing Tsuna?" I nodded, my attention back onto him. "Are you going to tell me what you mean by truth now? I," he waved his hand over the wrecked ceremony, "have finished this game. I've won. Your Boss has lost. Tell me the truth that you spoke of."

I looked at him in the eye, and gave him my poker face to match his.

"No."

His eyebrow twitched. The Shimon behind me looked at this exchange in interest.

"The game is over."

"No. The truth… is not supposed to be spoken by me."

"You still insist on making things take their course? I've done a little research on Brighteyes. Did you know all this would happen?"

"How could I not?"

The Ninth's Guardians, the Ninth himself, Reborn, the Varia and even Dino tensed and grew defensive. I tried not to be too hurt as Enma gave a tiny quirk of the mouth.

"It seems you didn't tell your _allies_ our plans."

"I know Tsuna will beat you."

Enma blinked placidly, fully confident that no, Tsuna _can't_ beat him. And he was true.

Tsuna couldn't beat him, right now. Why else would I use future tense?

Adelheid murmured something into Enma's ear, and he nodded in agreement. "You're right, Adelheid. We can kill them anytime. What we need to show them is living hell."

Then Katou Julie went up and picked up Chrome.

"I'll take along Chrome too! We have date plans!" He winked at Tsuna, still pinned by Gravity.

"Chrome!" Tsuna exclaimed.

My eyes narrowed.

Oh no he didn't.

Conscience battled plot, and soon enough, conscience won. _Haven't I already done enough damage? _I asked myself, as I readied my stance my eyes fixed on Julie's back. Huh… It seemed like my mind had already been made up without me realising.

Lunging forward, I used the last strength in my legs and jumped out of the crater.

_Flames! Invisibility!_

My Flames covered me, and made me invisible as I directed a sharpened chopstick and drove it into his arm. He nearly dropped Chrome, before his eyes narrowed on me with a sharp smirk.

"You're not as clever as you think you are."

Suddenly my Star Flames were stolen from me, like how I stole Belle's flames in the future. Only another Brighteye could do that. They were sucked…

_Behind me!_

I whirled around, another chopstick at the ready but it was too late.

A neat chop to the back of my head, and I heard Tsuna cry "_ALICE!"_ at the edge of my consciousness before Wend's face filled my vision.

"Sorry," he grinned.

And I had one sparkling clear thought when I finally got knocked out.

_No wonder they got out safely. They've got hostages. Like me._

_Huh. Why do they always kidnap girls anyway?_

* * *

Tsuna stared at Talbot, the mysterious old man who promised to restore the Vongola Rings even stronger than before for the price of a fifty percent success…

If he had a strong enough will, his Flames would reveal what the Vongola Ring's new form.

Gulping, he stretched his fingers for the misshapen lump on the tray, knowing which was his instinctively. He only needed the willpower. His Will would turn into flames, then burn away this rock, and his Gear would come out. Right.

He shuddered in a breath, focusing on his worry for Alice and Chrome. On his anger at Gokudera and Yamamoto's injuries. On his frustration at not being strong enough to protect Ryohei and the Ninth. His want to understand why Enma had become… who he had become.

His Flame flared, and the room filled with orange, shortly followed with red and yellow.

People stood in awe, and Talbot chuckled as he felt the boys succeed.

"What's this?"

Tsuna stared at his ring, while Gokudera flipped open his shirt to stare at his new belt. Ryohei just blinked a bit to get the sun spots out of his eyes (preeetty stars) until he felt the new weight on his arm and freaked out.

What the heck? Garyuu became a bangle!

Tsuna gave a small grin and a laugh, before looking out the window.

Chrome. The timid girl wasn't there, staying in the corner with I-pin in her arms. No small encouraging whispers of _Boss_ anymore. They were going to rescue her. And _Alice. _It wouldn't be the first time for him to feel that way. It was so strange to not feel the peculiar feeling of being followed. Every single time Alice wasn't there on a big mission, he would _feel_ the absence behind him. _That_ was how much she was familiar to him now.

Because Alice was the first he had ever met, after all, and the first to have stuck by his side the whole time. He thought that maybe even in Primary school she was always watching him. Somehow that should seem scary and stalkerish but…

_We're coming to rescue you now. Hang on._

* * *

Hibari looked at his new bracelet, which had Roll's spikes sticking out of it and grinned. He liked it.

After eavesdropping on the fools – weren't they Mafia? How could he just so easily just sit outside the window and listen – and finding out where they the other small animal had fled – the red headed one.

Talking into his phone with a clipped tone, he let Hibird land in his hair.

Usually he wouldn't be in a hurry, but he had a debt, no matter how small it may be. The yellow-eyed one got taken. It was time to call in a few _small _favours.

In thirty minutes Kusakabe arrived in a helicopter, and he smirked.

Maybe the thrill of a good fight would dissolve this feeling of irritation.

* * *

Lambo was uncharacteristically silent when he received his rock which contained Udon and his Gear.

He wasn't stupid, contrary to many people implying it was so. He just liked _acting_ stupid. No-one expected him to do anything, he was fed, when he went on a tantrum he was annoying enough to get people desperate enough to give him his favourite treats.

Who wouldn't want to be spoilt?

Mama gave him all the affection he craved since he was little. After all he wasn't a six year old assassin for nothing – why else would the Bovino accept the Vongola adopting him into their family so easily, and saying that they were _honoured_ to do it? All families had a sense of pride. He was just lucky Vongola was egotistical enough to accept it.

He was lucky that they didn't think to realise that no normal kid would know how to throw grenades properly, hide weapons all over his body and never seem to run out ammunition. He was quite heavy as a result, but he could always excuse his three servings of Mama's _delicious_ breakfast on that.

No-one thought that his mission was to be _accepted_ by Vongola.

He was surprised that Alice-nee didn't know. Or maybe she _did_ know, and that was why she was so strict with him. After all, it was the pink-eyed Brighteye that sent him to Japan.

And hadn't he done his job properly? He had everyone wrapped around his small finger – no-one wanted him to fight, whenever he wanted something he could cry and he would get it – even though he was six years old and he _should_ know better.

He was in paradise. No training with excessive pampering.

Well, his previous Bovino Boss had always criticised him that his flaw was laziness and never being serious. He didn't really mind.

Lambo even had his whole life planned. He was going to be spoilt until seven, use puppy eyes and the 'growing up' excuse from eight to thirteen. From fourteen to sixteen he would still act pretty useless (but go on missions, because he would need combat experience). From seventeen he would just surprise them with efficiency and be praised.

But why was he feeling so out of it when Alice-nee shoved him towards Dino, wordlessly asking Dino-nii to protect him?

He had felt so useless. He didn't expect to care enough for them to feel disgusted at himself for feeling useless. Even in the future, after using a huge burst of flame to fuel that stupid shield they gave him and fell unconscious, the first thought was that he had done _good_. That all of Alice-nee's worrying and quiet near-admonishments about being more serious were just silly.

No-one realised he had peeked over the rubble, and saw Alice-nee get captured trying to save Chrome-nee.

And in that moment, he was thinking _if I had only been near them I could have helped._

So Lambo, in a rare moment of seriousness, took his rock even as Gokudera swiped it away from him thinking he didn't _understand_ and that he _couldn't do it_.

He scrunched his face and in a crackle of lightning and a huge flash of green light, Lambo felt the rock melt a huge helmet land on his head. Although Lambo didn't really understand why he wasn't _overjoyed _at the aspect of having the only person who had ever tried to align him moralistically abducted and instead felt a huge sense of loss, he felt his helmet soberly and nodded to himself.

Taking his head out of the stupid helmet and smiling idiotically at the gobsmacked faces of Bakadera and Tsuna-nii, he left it on the ground and raced off out of the room (he would take advantage of his kid status as much as possible – one of those older people would pick up his gear and carry it for him anyway he thought with an _bratty_ giggle).

Lightning users were known to be strong, stubborn, and cling to what the liked, no matter the cost.

Lambo sighed, and dug out a grape lolly out of his hair.

Unwrapping it and popping it in his mouth, it seemed like it was time to show why I-pin was only ranked third in the 'most promising assassins in ten years' list that Fuuta-nii made. Realistically, she should have been second.

He was first for a reason for a reason after all.

…

He scowled.

He hated applying himself. Turning around, he lay down on carpet and yawning, prepared to take a nap. The people in the other room would definitely decide to bring him now that he had broken his Vongola Gear open.

Just a matter of time.

And ah… did that sun feel nice.

* * *

_There was a door in front of me, and I reached out knowing something important was on the other side. Something that was so important to me, that I had been reaching out for so long – my soul longed for rest, it was tired and worn. That realisation shook me, because when had I ever been able to feel my soul?_

_Gently putting my hands to my chest, I felt it there, my soul was like a blanket, well worn and used. It was warm, but it was tired. It wanted to go through that door now, to the rest that was promised to me…_

_What was promised to me?_

_But the door was just there, dark ornate blue, and I knew that I would just have to touch it to get through. Something was pulling me forward, actually, and I walked forward and smiled when I was going to put my hands on it when there was a scream behind me that startled me into bumping the door open._

_I looked backwards, and saw a shadow reaching out, screaming something I couldn't hear—_

_The door beckoned, and I stepped through and nearly cried when I saw another door at the other end of the room. Only this time, there was a beautiful woman smiling sadly at me, standing up from where she had been sitting and her robes were magnificent in a pale way. She walked over to me, and I felt safe and felt no need to push her away when she swept me into a surprisingly strong hug._

"_I'm sorry, little one."_

_I nearly bristled at the term little. I was not short. When I turned up my head to tell her that, I heard another scream from behind me, from the open door._

"_What's that?"_

"_Screams from people who love you. Alas, I'm so sorry…" She trailed off as her eyes filled with tears and dropped onto my head. "You've suffered so much. Don't you want to let go?"_

_I sighed. "I can't. Tsuna and people still need me."_

"_What if I say you can let go? Someone else will take your place." She smiled at me, hugging me tighter, and suddenly I felt restricted and I tried to get away only to realise in a flicker of panic that I couldn't._

"_What? Let me go!"_

"_Your time is nearly up, child. Relax, and let me lead you to your rest…"_

_I was then dragged towards the other door, and I grew limper and limper without knowing why, my eyes trained over the Lady's shoulder at the shadows screaming from the door I had come from. Then there was a flash, and a gruff yell knocked me from the Lady's embrace._

"_Judgement! Let her go!"_

"_World. You have no right to continue her mission. She has more than proved herself."_

_I blinked my eyes open, and I was astonished to see Bill, in all his bald glory staring up at the Lady. And he was yelling at her. _

"_Judgement, the girl is still needed."_

_Judgement's eyes narrowed._

"_World. You have been messing up many things haven't you? Now you want to ruin lives? I am rescuing her from more unneeded pain. Love. Truth. Betrayal. World, you have done _more_ than enough."_

_What? Why was she calling Bill World?_

"_But that's needed. It's what is required Judgement." He turned to me, and _pushed_ me somehow towards the door I had come from, and I wasted no time to get up and go through the door. Judgement – the Lady's eyes – followed me with sorrow, before the doors closed, and the screaming shadows caught me, suffocated me, and dragged me down through the floor which I realised wasn't a floor at all…_

* * *

I woke up feeling like that was the most intense dream I've ever witnessed.

What was my brain thinking? I woke up with a big headache and no pain at all anywhere else. A miracle? Or miracle healing?

_Intense_ medical healing?

Or maybe not.

I cursed, even as wriggled myself out of ropes that bound my wrists and getting intense rope burn, before untying my legs. Then I massaged my legs to get circulation going again. I sighed.

I shouldn't have tried to rescue Chrome after all – look what heroism did. Getting strange dreams (that would have to be interpreted later), stuck in an enemy stronghold. I just thought that maybe, if I saved Chrome, people would trust me again. I wasn't fooled by Reborn's reaction. I think this time I stepped too far. He had forgiven me for Ninth's Gola Mosca thing, and the Future's many hazards already. This time though…

Letting out another sigh, I let my blank face wash over me. Suddenly I was in auto-pilot.

Right. Dream reading comes after escaping. After all, Daemon needed Chrome to steal Mukuro's body. He didn't really need me. And I didn't really want to wait for rescue either.

Casting a glance at Chrome next to me and the window… Chrome had been stuck here because of how Daemon made her organs.

_I_ didn't have magical organs inside me.

But if I moved Chrome… then Daemon would know. Though if I didn't escape then, worst case scenario – Bill yelling at me again, sending me back, and Murphy's Law would come at me with three times the force and the world itself would try to suffocate me.

…no choice then.

Rearranging Chrome so that she would be more comfortable and untying the ropes around her ankles and putting her far far away from the bed (just in case that Julie/Daemon guy tried something – you never know) I did the oldest trick in the book. I let the curtain out the window, tied all the blankets and sheets into a line and threw it out.

Climbing down didn't give me a heart attack.

The knots slipping because I sucked at tying knots did.

With my face full of old moss and grimacing at how I wished that for _once in my life_ I could get it easy, I tried finding the most soft-looking piece of tree underneath me and jumped.

The blankets and sheets drifted after me in a line… kind of.

_Dear Heaven, _I thought to myself as I free fell.

Tsuna better give me some type of compensation for future injuries.

Why did I get into these types of messes?

* * *

Tsuna faced off Enma at the beach, Gokudera and Ryohei flanking him, and Lambo sleeping in Gokudera's arms. Ryohei had their supplies for the week, and the tent, so he was the only one that could fight right now.

"We've been waiting, Tsuna-kun," Enma's voice drifted from above, and he started as he looked into red eyes.

"Enma!" Tsuna exclaimed.

"You were right with coming alone. If you've brought troops along there would have been more dead bodies to deal with," Enma said flatly, raising his hands as the red light around his hand started pulsing again. Just like how it worked in the Inheritance Ceremony.

Tsuna tensed, as Gokudera woke Lambo up and Ryohei dropped their travel packs.

"How dare you" Gokudera snarled, even as Tsuna asked a desperate question.

"Is… Is Alice and Chrome safe?"

Julie grinned at that, his face twisting asymmetrically upwards.

"Chrome is safe on my bed looking like a little angel!" He said, grinning. Tsuna blanched. "And Alice is tied up to the wall because it would be too dangerous to let her escape, ha!" He said happily.

Reborn was unfazed. "Wait. Why are they here too? Were you the ones that let those ominous guards onto the island?" He asked.

"Ominous guards?"

Reborn tipped his hat forward. "The guards of the underworld…"

Tsuna followed his mentor's previous gaze and stepped backwards in shock at how _sudden_ their presence was. And he didn't feel it at all! "Vindice!"

"Are they human?" Enma asked with distant curiosity.

Adelheid shook her head. "They were, long ago… some call them death gods, and others call them devils. They are the most feared in the Mafia. Those who defy their rules are arrested without hesitation and are doomed to spend their life in a water prison that can't be broken out of."

A whistle. "Scary!" Julie said, smiling.

Lambo was crying. "_REALLY _scary!"

As Tsuna bent down to comfort Lambo, Enma addressed the Vindice.

"I don't recall inviting you to this sacred island!" His eyes narrowed. "Have you come to mourn for the Vongola that will soon meet their end?"

Tsuna hitched a breath.

"No," came the raspy reply. "We live to take revenge… we know no other emotion besides hatred."

A flash of pity and fear went through Tsuna, as he echoed them. "Hatred…"

"We have come here, to complete the oath between Vongola Primo Giotto, and Shimon Cozart." Tsuna was surprised. A promise between Primo and Shimon when they were enemies? Enma remained silent and aware of what they were talking about. "Giotto and Cozart were connected by a strong friendship. Thus it was impossible for Vongola and Shimon to bear swords against each other."

They paused, to let their words set in. "However should there be such a case, then it was deemed our duty to destroy the defeated."

Tsuna looked at the black cloaks unseeingly, his new ring suddenly seeming heavy.

"Destroy the defeated… was it so impossible for them to fight one another? Then there must have been a misunderstanding!" Tsuna wheeled towards Enma, who stared impassively back at his deduction.

"There wasn't," he said simply.

The Vindice cut in.

"This oath has been activated twice… the one to lost this battle shall be locked in our prison forever."

Enma gave a small grim smile.

"I like these rules. Especially the 'forever' part."

"Enma!" Tsuna cried, not believing his friend would ever say that.

The Vindice already took it as agreement.

"The dice have been rolled. Descendants of Giotto and Cozart… Let the battle begin!"

With a swish of their cloaks they disappeared, leaving them after telling that they were only executors and not judgers – they would execute their life sentence to any who leave and lose their pride in battle, leaving Tsuna and Enma staring at each other.

"They would execute anyone who had their pride crushed, huh," Gokudera murmured to himself.

And Tsuna didn't know what to do, because he didn't know what his pride _was_.

* * *

**Humour shot – Bill's crazy life.**

It was nice an all, in Heaven sometimes. Those rumours about meeting dead loved ones was true. Very true.

All too much true.

Sometimes he understood _all too well_ why the Angel of Love was so crazy mad.

For in could get very complicated in heaven.

Imagine a scenario like this: A couple loved each other to bits. One died.

Simple. Capiche. Easy to solve. The other one dies, and BABAM if they were good people they meet.

Now what about this: A couple loved each other to bits. One died. The other moved on and took a second wife, had two kids and a very happy family together.

What would he do then? The first woman would have been waiting for the man – who would have another woman and the first woman would get jealous and jealousy was a bad feeling and has to be sorted out before entering Heaven. Then the two kids would have to get used to two mothers. And don't ever forget the ancestors.

Gah. The stupid idiotic ancestors.

"_My_ daughter married him first!"

"Well, _mine_ gave him forty years of happiness!"

"_My_ great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter couldn't help dying from that plane crash! Your daughter is just second-hand!"

"_EXCUSE ME?_ I will tell you now that my neice's second-twice removed sister's uncle's brother's cousin's husband picked her in his utter grief because she was so lovely, and was most likely his _SOUL MATE!"_

And then they would all turn to Bill, on poor extra desk-duty to solve it.

How the heck would you solve that?

Bill grumbled.

And people wondered why he shunted people off into second lives. They had so much time to think that they would have already _gotten over_ their bloody marital problems. Heaven was understaffed as it was, as angels worked for free because of the goodness overwhelming from the bottoms of their hearts.

Bah.

Just as he was getting ready to change shifts with the next dead-tired Angel, he was way-laid by a tearful fiancée crying because her great times fifteen grandfather had found out her fiancé was from a rival faction and wasn't allowed to marry.

He nearly screamed.

Instead he beamed her an angelic scowl and settled down again.

Damn marital issues.

* * *

**Hey!**

**I am really tired! If not for a promise with a friend to update this sunday, I would not be here! MUAHAHAHA! Just saying, this is the last week of holidays, and school is coming up. My last year.**

**Yup.**

**So although updates for this year may be erratic, I hope you stick with me! And understand!**

**I'm sorry!**

**I hope you like the update!**

**I love your reviews very very much, so please tell me how you felt!**

**Thank youuu!**


	58. and determined plotting

Reborn frowned, eyeing the spot that Vindice left, knowing his student was now even more confused. He tipped his hat down, knowing sometimes that life wasn't fair at all _(he never asked for, for this _cursed_ body where he could not even enjoy the sensation of death) _and cursed himself for getting soft, because he knew he shouldn't have felt just that little bit of anger at how the Ninth had thrown his student into a battle where there was such a large chance that they couldn't win.

It had been different with Byakuran. Mukuro. Xanxus. He knew their skill levels; he knew the talent in which his student could grow. But this time it wasn't talent – this time it was some strange grudge that gave huge supernatural power to rings, and how can talent beat pure force? No matter how his student also got a power-up, it was not the same.

But only figureheads could be human. He was just a drone, unquestioning of the Boss's orders.

So he cursed himself for going soft, because he had seen thousands of men die by his gun, and many friends sacrificed in pointless battles. He shouldn't have felt anything if his student was going to die. Shouldn't harbor even that drop of resentment. If it was known, he could be killed.

Could. He was not known as the best for nothing.

He was too professional to express his emotions though, so here he was. A well-oiled machine ready to pick up the pieces. The strongest of them all.

Sometimes, even he forgot that the strongest, hardest metals were the most brittle.

Reborn closed his hands around Leon, feeling the little twitches of muscle underneath skin and listening to his student's voice talking to Gokudera.

Cracks in the armour.

Reborn tilted his head back, just to see his student and his family. Tsuna was too naïve. Too idealistic. He didn't realise _(yet) _how the Mafia was ruled by fear, secrets, and blood. He didn't understand why everyone looked upon him, and smiled, saying he was just like Vongola Primo with a spark of hope in their eyes – Vongola Primo had changed everything. They were expecting Tsuna to change everything too.

But looking at his student's hunched form…

Sometimes, he was struck with the fact that Tsuna was fifteen years old.

Reborn looked down.

…There was sand in his shoes. That was unacceptable. Sand trails could be tracked, and Reborn prided himself in being untraceable when he wanted to. So he jumped into his student's hair and let the sand leak out there. They were talking. He let them, as they slowly headed down towards the stone arch where their 'fights' were going to take place.

Gripping Tsuna's hair a little too tightly (he gave a squawk, and tried to wave Reborn off. As if a clumsy attempt like that could ever stop _him)_,he tried to pinpoint where Vindice were. Then he gave Tsuna a gentle pat on the head – he stiffened and looked at him in confusion – before hopping back on the ground and leading the way.

Reborn looked backwards, seeing his student hop awkwardly over a root, Gokudera steadying him, ignoring Ryohei's grunt of exertion while Lambo whined for candy, letting the moment seep into his memory before continuing his smirk, and leading them deep into the forest.

"Juudaime!" Gokudera exclaimed behind him, "be careful of the dangerous… err, obstacles!"

"Huh? What are you talking about, Gokudera? Isn't this just a flat road to the extreme?"

He imagined the glare.

"You're not as strong and delicate as Juudaime, turf-top! I'm sure everyone agrees with me!"

Silence.

They all knew what should have been there though. _"Haha, Tsuna isn't delicate, Gokudera!" _Then after a beat, _"Gokudera is just slightly delusional. Don't worry, Tsuna," _would follow. Then the silver haired man would fly into a rage, making his student sigh, Lambo cry, and Ryohei's boisterous laughter.

There was a cough.

"Lambo-sama wants _caaandy_! Bakadera! Gimme!"

Well, Lambo was crying anyway.

There was an immediate scoff. "In your dreams, you stupid cow."

Tsuna gave an uncertain cough of laughter, and Ryohei took in the chance to yell out some EXTREEME commitments and exclamations of how they would win. Totally. Like, yeah, they were EXTREMELY invincible! Kyoko said so!

The sun was dipping towards the west when they reached Aoba, and the babble stopped. Ryohei saw him, and put down his backpack next to Lambo, and stepped forward without a word. This was his fight.

He stared at his fellow boxing enthusiast.

"Why, Aoba?" He asked, even as he prepped himself, warming up, listening to the other man's response. Ryohei frowned, determined, as he watched the eyes underneath the glasses also holding the same glint of steel. They had pride, lots of it.

He was their big brother, and he was going do his job well.

* * *

After _that_ fall, I was surprised I could even breathe. I was expecting an eyeful of grumpy Bill, actually.

Like, '_argh! You go and kill yourself again! Do you _know_ how that would affect Murphy's law?"_

That brought a smile to my face, even as I started twitching my toes and working up to check for extensive bodily damage from my latest suicide attempt.

Just for Tsuna. Seriously, the things I do for him…

I sighed, and happily noted that my lungs were working.

And hey! I wasn't even spitting blood or something dramatic!

With that little bit of cheer, I twisted my neck a little and started cataloguing where I had landed.

Though true, the fall hadn't been as large as I thought it was. When I looked up, I could see the window I had jumped out, the curtains flapping in the breeze. Lucky it was only second floor. Any further…

I hadn't tied the blankets tight enough. So, my knot tying skills as they were, they loosened and fluttered all over the place.

Lovely. I scowled, looking through the tree canopy and noting the time. It was near afternoon, was my approximation. Late afternoon… near evening, I amended when I saw slightly orange-tinged clouds.

My guns were still on my body, I belatedly realised. Which I was suddenly glad for, because I had been stupid enough _not_ to check if I had my weapons before escaping the enemy stronghold. The chopsticks in my hair were gone now though… but the ones sewn into my pants leg were still there, so that area was fine.

I'll just keep to guns, then.

Noting the chill in the air, and remembering vaguely about how Tsuna and the others had to stay overnight (in which afterwards the fell into Rauji's trap for Lambo's fight), I shook my head blurrily and tried to get up. How many nights was it? I couldn't really remember. Flopping down at an unexpected spike of pain from my arms, I stared at them in dismay. Having shielded my head with my arms, my sleeves were all dirty and torn. There was a scratch here and there, but… the GERMS.

I had become very paranoid with germs.

I sighed, as I actually got up, and thought that maybe I could get lucky and look pathetic enough (I wasn't honourable enough to not play the damsel in distress card. Misguided chivalrous men might piggyback me, and then I wouldn't need to walk. It was just that being an _actual_ damsel in distress was just plain annoying).

Looking up yet again at the curtain flapping away on top of that hill, I vaguely remembered (it was hard to see when free-falling, you know?) some blankets had fallen with me. It would be cold, so gathering them might be to my advantage. Survival guides said something about keeping warm, right?

…I'd rather not trust myself with starting a fire.

So I stumbled around, and managed to spot a blanket tangled up the branches of a tree, and another one dirty and half soaked in a puddle.

Well, better than nothing.

Using the dirty blanket to shield the clean one – why _white_ blankets, for heaven's sake? Cue grumpy gripe, because white blankets + camouflage in green forest did _not_ work.

Bundling them together, I wrapped them around me and flumped to the ground.

Surprisingly out of breath for such a small task, I frowned as I twiddled with my suit jacket. I should… go somewhere. Where had the fights gone? I needed to find the others.

Aoba and Ryohei had fought in a random clearing, so that was out. Lambo and Rauji fought in an underground catacomb-like place, and there was no way trying to find _that_. Gokudera and Shitt-P had fought…

In an abandoned town. That would make most sense, as there would even be shelter there, however mouldy and gross. But as even I knew I was directionally challenged… (I wouldn't ever admit that to Gokudera, who had perfect sense of direction. _Never_. He would never let it down, ever.)

The next fight though… Adelheid and Hibari fought at a waterfall, a large one. Afterwards were Yamamoto and Kaoru… kind of. It was a strange fight. I think.

It was also probably when Wend would move.

…

I sighed.

If I closed my eyes a little and focused hard, I thought I could hear a faint roaring of water.

Frowning and sinking deeper into the surprisingly fluffy blanket for a few more seconds, I hauled myself up, estimating where the sound had come from. Such a large waterfall would logically be loud. One just had to… listen for it.

I was (I think) around half-way there when I stopped, the water roaring much louder in my ears.

Here I was, going back to Tsuna again, where the Mafia were, where the people I just _technically _betrayed were. I remembered the flash of distrust in Reborn's eyes, and banged my head on a tree. Hard. Then a few more times to get the shivering out (his eyes were _scary_).

Forcing a scowl, fixing my eyes straight forward, and trying to hide the white blanket's luminescence in the moonlight, I tried not to think about Reborn rejecting my place in Vongola… at long last.

From there, I took a step forward, tentative confidence coming back into my movements.

Because Tsuna was loyal to his friends. He would do anything for his friends.

_(but Reborn is different)_

* * *

Reborn looked impassively around their stone prison that the big fat guy, Rauji, had tricked them into. Lambo and Rauji were standing in the middle of a flat arena, while they were trapped in a small stone bubble – that Rauji had promised would cause the ceiling of sharp stalactites to crash down if they escaped.

Tsuna was surprised. He could tell. Too open with his body language. He should learn from Gokudera how to hide his true feelings. Or Lambo. That kid was the master of that art.

Learn strength from Ryohei. Adaptation and dedication from Yamamoto. Blood and hatred from Mukuro. Pride and honour from Hibari. Innocence – however feigned – and patience with Lambo. Shrewdness and loyalty from Gokudera. Skills – like looking underneath the underneath – and Mafia from Alice.

Everything needed for a Boss. He had accumulated the perfect, diverse family.

Everyone was talented as well. He had secure footholds in nearly everyone's heart. Hibari would stay, to fight him. Ryohei respected Master Pao Pao. Mukuro had a grudge with Hibari – with Hibari, he would come sooner or later. Yamamoto was indebted to Tsuna from saving his life, Gokudera gave his loyalty absolutely. Alice and Lambo, however…

Alice.

Alice was not connected to anyone – yet, she also had secure footholds with everyone. It was ridiculous how easily she got loyalty. She had probably been trained to get solid relationships, but…

Alice wasn't directly connected to Ryohei; however, she was close friends with Kyoko, which automatically extended Ryohei's protection towards her. She had never acted as if she knew it, but she was good at hiding. Too good.

Reborn's eyes darkened a little, before forcing a smirk on his face. No-one seemed to notice. Everyone was riveted on Lambo being an idiot in front of his future murderer.

(He cast a critical eye over the battle and doubted Rauji would outright _kill_ Lambo. And where there was even a little life there was the key to victory. He wasn't overly worried, so he turned back to his musing)

Everyone else too. She was the first of the Family to approach Tsuna – primary – and had much influence. He knew that Tsuna regarded her with as much respect and friendship that he was surprised at times.

But he knew why – he had caught a thought once. About how everyone, even his mother, hadn't expected much from Tsuna, and that Alice was one of the first to ever make him feel otherwise. She was also one of the first strong female influences in his life – she had proved that not all women were like his mother, who waited and cooked and pretended to be happy.

(Tsuna remembered vividly, to Reborn's amusement, when he had accidentally mistaken Alice's cooking for Poison Cooking and got an offended silent treatment for the whole of a week)

Mukuro had business deals with her and actually seemed to like the company. Reborn knew about their deals of course, no matter how hidden they thought they were. He had tabs on Chrome. Chrome herself thought Alice was the one that 'brought Mukuro-sama to her'.

Yamamoto was the same as Gokudera. They both regarded her as a close friend, no matter how dysfunctional the relationship was. Absolute loyalty.

Simple. Very Mafia. Understandable of Gokudera of course – and he knew that Yamamoto had the material to be the perfect assassin.

Lambo and Hibari however, were much more complicated.

Though it didn't matter in the end, when Alice was so entrenched in their family, but didn't show any influences of the family's influence on herself. Blank, impassive, stolid and always protecting Tsuna – which everyone knew was her mission _but didn't care either way_. Some days she acted human, the next few she would totally withdraw. Reborn had even felt surprised in the future, that he had felt, vaguely, her depression. It didn't seem like someone like her, who stood tall and stared impassively at the world, could even feel depressed.

She too, was a well-oiled machine, with a directive. The Mafia would be proud.

The problem was who controlled this machine? If the Vongola were, she would have told them about the Shimon, but she didn't.

Reborn knew how dangerous a machine can be.

He stared at his own hands, before putting Leon back onto his hat.

His thoughts wondered back to the stupid cow – who really was an annoying bratwho needed to be kicked around until he realised that brain cells were supposed to be _used_ – started tearing up in a spectacular fashion. Reborn watched with a type of morbid curiosity at how his tear glands worked _on call_. How did he do that?

…not that he was ever going to admit that a six year old cow-suited afro could do something better than him of course.

Lambo gave a loud sob, and the ten-year bazooka popped out of his hair and onto Lambo himself, and to Reborn's eternal hilarity, even Gokudera didn't realise that Lambo had brought that on purpose.

For the stupid cow hadn't taken to wearing the bazooka in his hair for _weeks_.

Reborn gave a little smirk.

* * *

I reached the waterfall near midnight, by approximation, and scrambled down the stairway and down the cliff to huddle like a white glowing lump at the bottom. The river churned half a meter away from my feet, surprisingly close, but no-one would look at the edge of the river.

…Though if I ever wanted a fast escape, I was trapped. I couldn't swim for my _life_.

I was still worried about Reborn though. I would have to approach Tsuna first, and stick close to him until I met Grey, who would automatically help in defending me from Reborn. Reborn was _dangerous._

Like, really dangerous. Scary dangerous. We had a stat sheet on him, before he turned baby. The Brighteye estimates on his strength…

Gah.

My brain hurt.

It was funny though, I smirked, that Reborn distrusted me only when I didn't protect Tsuna's Inheritance ceremony, and not after not telling him about the Ninth, the Boss of the Vongola himself, got captured and tortured.

What mixed messages Reborn was giving.

Loyalty to the Ninth indeed. Tsuna got him wrapped around his little finger, and he didn't even know it (and vice versa).

…The both of them were such idiots.

Sigh.

Boys.

So if I could get into Tsuna's good graces, and explain my actions or something (which I couldn't fully do, but it was a show of trust, right?) Tsuna would forgive, and Reborn would follow, like how Mafia law goes.

But what can I say?

What _could_ I say?

And…

Who would back me up?

I knew Tsuna would, though heaven knew why. Gokudera would follow Tsuna – and I liked to believe that our arguments were a type of friendship. Dysfunctional, sure, but still, friends? I hoped so. Enough to back me up though, I wasn't so sure. He was serious about protecting Tsuna.

Yamamoto… I frowned, thinking of him still on that hospital bed. I had called Byakuran, so he was going to get healed soon.

The thing about Yamamoto though, was that he was so _happy_ all the time, even though he was never actually happy. It showed how good his acting was when no-one knew he was so close to the brink of _suicide_. (I couldn't even begin to understand why one would have so much despair as to want to… _kill_ himself. I wanted to live. So badly.) But Yamamoto and I were friends – we've known each other for years. I hung out at his shop all the time, and it had gotten to the point that every Thursday they kept the table in the corner with a pot of jasmine tea, and we chatted as Yamamoto cleaned the tables and served sushi.

Sometimes Haru would join me. Kyoko had to pick up her brother on Thursday boxing practices so she never went.

Which reminded me of the girls. Kyoko, Haru and Hana (who cannot be discounted just because of the fact she was Ryohei's future girlfriend. Ha! Future girlfriend! And she had that crush on Lambo! I would never, ever stop teasing her about that, if she ever finds out). Chrome, I liked to believe, like Gokudera, was close enough to me to understand I didn't have a _choice_.

Kyoko's influence spoke for itself.

Bianchi was hard to get. She was seriously in love with Reborn, yet she had already told me that she was there if I was ever in need of confidence. But you never knew – was it a strategy to get me to lower my guard? Bianchi was dangerous enough to get Dino's men parting for her. She was strong, and she was a _freelancer._

I growled, rubbing my forehead, before dropping Bianchi's case.

Fuuta I wouldn't drag into this mess. Lambo too, and I-pin. They were all only _kids_. No matter how screwed up this world was, damn it. They should all grow up happy and as protected as possible.

Mukuro would be on my side. Absolutely, since we had this weird favour thing going on, as well as how he hated what the Vongola represented.

Hey, I didn't have to worry about Chrome after all! I blinked in surprise. If Mukuro was going to pick my side, then I would have Ken, Chikusa, M.M, Fran and all his lackeys as well. Barring the fact they all got beaten up by Tsuna, who was hardly trained at all…

Hibari was strange. His case just made my brain hurt. One second he was chasing me for breaking rules. Next he was in an oddly protective stance against Adelheid. Then that revelation of him being in _love_ with me in the future. Then the present self being as ice-blocky as usual. Then actually cooperating with me with my plan against Wend. Then saving me from Wend. Then going with me to the Inheritance Ceremony.

…

Too hard. Next.

I scrunched up my face as I squinted against the moon, estimating the time.

Opposition was strong, no matter how many people were behind me. Yuni might not turn on me, but Reborn was her 'uncle', and therefore, by default, all the Arcobaleno if called, would be against me, as well as the Ninth, actually, which lead to the whole Vongola family being against me.

I could always call on the Brighteye protection – but then my mission would have _failed._

Definitely _not_ an option.

I didn't live for another seven years just to fail! Dammit, Heaven was just there!

Practically a few months away (well, nearer to a year, but still.)

(Irony was, I was actually looking forward to my 'death'. Funny, funny things. Reborn wouldn't have mattered after just a few months. Why _now?_)

Staring at the water, I kept strategising. I had to get as many people on my side as I could, and ended up wrapping myself tighter in my two blankets because halfway through thinking, I realised my toes were freezing. I hated freezing toes.

I frowned. This wasn't looking good. I had to outsmart Reborn. I was trapped in my hiding place. I didn't know how many days it would take for them to come here.

And I had freezing toes.

Life…

I sighed.

It wasn't easy.

* * *

They had trekked and lost Ryohei on the first day. On the second day, nothing had happened, only it was more silent. On the second night, Lambo had fought. On the third day…

Gokudera looked down at Shitt. P. with an arrogant smirk on his face.

"I know _everything _about Juudaime, Shitopi-chan," he smirked. "You think showing embarrassing photos of Juudaime is enough to waver my resolve? You're too simple!"

Gokudera scoffed in his head.

Really, Shimon bastards. They thought they could get away with kidnapping their members and injuring that baseball idiot?

Vongola was the strongest! And they should have known that Juudaime _never ever_ abandoned his family. Stupid idiots. Why else would he follow him?

Anyway, he thought Juudaime's face in those pictures were pretty cute. But since Juudaime's face was already really embarrassed looking, he won't say it aloud. Just once.

He loaded his VG.

He was _invincible_ because his Boss was _invincible_.

It was so obvious.

He let out a cloud of smoke from his lungs, and looked down on the fermenting UMA specimen. Pity he had to fight an alien just when he met one. Maybe when the Vongola finished beating up the Shimon he could ask Enma where he could encounter more aliens…?

* * *

Third night. Reborn re-evaluated. He stared at the campfire, and watched Lambo fighting for grape candy.

Tsuna however, was staring blankly into the flames, reeling from Enma's burst of outrage and accusation – that Iemitsu had killed Enma's whole family right in front of his eyes. The _Flood of Blood_ incident, and Reborn had nothing to say to him.

So he turned, pasted on a smirk, and stroked Leon. And plotted, like the evil mastermind he was renowned as.

Tsuna (and therefore Gokudera), Yamamoto, Mukuro (and therefore Chrome, and his minions), Ryohei, and the entire Brighteye network would support Alice. He didn't know how many people she had indebted to her though.

He had the Vongola, the Arcobaleno, the Cervello, the CEDEF, Bianchi, Shamal, and eleven families who were indebted to him if things got dire.

But those people weren't personal enough. He had to persuade _Tsuna. _If Alice had swayed everyone that was close to _Tsuna_ on her side, then who could he work with?

Someone close that he could inspire doubt in Tsuna's mind. If Tsuna doubted, Gokudera would doubt. Yamamoto would struggle, but go with Tsuna. With Yamamoto would be Ryohei.

If only he could make Tsuna _doubt_.

Reborn looked at his student.

Oh he was doubting, alright.

Doubting _himself._ Reborn nearly scowled.

He returned his eyes back to the fire, and thought of the two remaining Guardians.

Lambo, and Hibari. He didn't know where he stood with them, nor Alice.

Hibari and Lambo were the two people who, to himself, were hardest to get close to _personally_. Hibari was only interested in Reborn himself for the fight, the action.

Ten years later, Hibari had been in _love_.

Reborn had always been acting on the assumption that Hibari was asexual. For once, he was proven wrong.

Ten Years Later Hibari, after digging into the future a bit, was renowned for being bloodthirsty. Strong, maybe even the strongest fighter in the world. Lead an independent group, called the Foundation that had ties to Vongola. Was never restricted. Was smart, and therefore, successful, both upside and downside of the world. He was everything Reborn had expected him to be, even if a surprisingly tall.

Then he took a peek into Hibari's thoughts and it was swirled with regret, and sadness, and happiness, and _love,_ and disappointment whenever he saw Alice because apparently… _she wasn't his Alice._

_His_ Alice.

Then he followed Alice once, when she was sending tea leaves to Hibari. Taking advantage of that _split_ second that he knew Hibari's defences were down (he always did that, when he saw Alice. _Dangerous, _Reborn's mind whispered, _Alice was good at worming through defences_) he dived into his mind.

Hibari wasn't asexual. Or bisexual, or homosexual, or heterosexual. He was just only inclined towards _Alice. _ Reborn knew the dangers of Reading a deep person, but Hibari had been surprisingly deep, for his shallow outward character.

Or maybe he had just developed that way, because when he met the younger version, and looked into his mind, it was all _annoyed _and _fighting_ and _cute animals_ and _what I want to eat next._

Alice had just become dangerous. Having Hibari on one's side was like having an army. So Reborn, back then, was glad that Alice was loyal to Vongola. _How_ she got Hibari's feelings was a mystery to all, but if such strong ties tied him to the Vongola, who was he to stop it?

But this time…

Lambo as well. Stupid Cow. Taking advantage of people was a skill, and he used it to the maximum. But because he took advantage of them so easily, Lambo had _no_ respect at all. None. Except maybe Nana, because every child liked a mother figure. And I-pin, who he thought was a worthy minion or something. But they too were easily taken advantage of.

Then there was Alice, who had usually taken herself to ignore the brat, but then suddenly, after the incident in the future where they nearly got killed, had taken herself to re-educate the… brattiness. He wondered if she saw the begrudging respect that Lambo gave – that no-one else had – when she reprimanded him without ever actually losing her temper, after the third shot of puppy-eyes?

He and Iemitsu had chosen Lambo for a _reason_. He was going to be strong.

Alice was dangerous. But he didn't mind, because Vongola had many dangerous people who were loyal to it.

Now, he wasn't sure anymore.

Any threat to the Vongola was to be annihilated.

His own ties with Hibari now, he was _sure, _was stronger than Alice's now. Reborn was sure that he could entice Hibari onto his side still.

Lambo, although he would never get Alice's type of respect, he had always been that stupid cow's goal. Lambo knew very well _who_ made the recommendation that made him a Guardian to Iemitsu, and there was that flash of gratitude once in awhile because of it. Reborn was sure he could exploit it.

He had to out-think Alice. And he couldn't even base his strategy on who he _thought_ she was.

Reborn looked up as he said something to Tsuna absentmindedly and surveying their campsite, a distant roar of water to his far left. Alice was a danger. A threat. Even without her ties with others, she was a strategic fighter. Not overwhelmingly strong, but hard to put down. And she was a _Brighteye_.

But he had tolerated much already. Mukuro. Gola Mosca. Future secrets. But to mess with an _Inheritance Ceremony _for one that she was supposed to be loyal to…

To betray _Tsuna_.

He glared at the fire, conversation filtering through his brain but not registering.

_That was unacceptable._

Reborn was not known as the most tolerable person after all.

His mind whirred back into action.

He had to make first contact.

That much was obvious.

* * *

I sneezed and got worried.

Sure, I didn't really remember how many days it had been until Hibari's fight, but _three days?_ At least I was near water (I didn't even have the option of boiling it) but _food_.

Hashbrowns danced in front of my eyes. I nearly drooled.

I kind of wanted to cry, actually.

I was cold. I was hungry. I didn't know when my friends would come. Who I didn't even if they were friends anymore. I wanted Grey. I wanted my family. I wanted a fire, I wanted something to stop myself driving myself mad with worry and boredom. I was probably drinking germs in with water, and I was sneezing. My nose was getting clogged up. I wanted to sleep.

And I was hungry. Did I mention I was hungry?

The only indication of where the others were, were the weird 'memory flashes' that came whenever Tsuna won a fight. It was a strange haze, where I was just forced to watch Giotto and Cozart creating Vongola or whatever (because truly, I wasn't that interested) and just praying Hibari would come soon and fight Adelheid.

Setting my face in a _fierce scowl_ (because I wasn't pouting, dammit all. I hadn't fallen that far yet. I think.

…Okay. I was pouting. But that was only because I was so _hungry…_)

Was I hallucinating or did I hear voices?

…Probably, since it was still night. The third sunrise I was going to see was going to come soon – the sky was getting a little lighter, from starry black to dim blue. Soon the clouds would turn gold, and the third day since I escaped would start.

By this time, even Reborn wouldn't have held me back from food.

Damn it.

I flumped to the side, and curled the blankets closer to me. I not-pouted as I fixed my eyes at the sky.

The sky turned gold, and beautiful swirls of red, orange and yellow were painted on clouds, streaks of grey at the very edges blending into misty blue that gradually turned a lighter and lighter blue. At the very top of the cliff, the tips of the leaves burned bright green in the sunlight.

Third day.

In the distance, I heard a helicopter.

* * *

Tsuna looked at Hibari standing in the helicopter, lost.

His friends were throwing away their lives just for _pride_ and a stupid four-hundred year grudge. His dad had apparently murdered Enma's family, Ryohei got taken away with Vindice, and he watched Rauji, Aoba and Shitt-P get taken too. He could imagine Enma's pain. He didn't know what his pride was. He was worried about Alice and Chrome. He was afraid that Yamamoto would never walk again.

Hibari glared down at them, noted the situation, gave an annoyed, 'hn' and jumped out of the helicopter.

Kusakabe gave a smirk and thumbs up, before flying away the helicopter.

"Hibari, you!" Gokudera exclaimed, angry at his dramatic entrance. Then angrier when Hibari ignored him.

"Hibari-san…" Tsuna trailed off. He stared at the ground.

Hibari still had his back facing him.

"Hey there, little animal," Hibari said to Tsuna. Hiie? Little animal? Tsuna looked at Hibari strangely. "Where's the other one? The one that ran wild during the Inheritance Ceremony?"

Gokudera was still irritated. "What?" he snapped, annoyed that he was confused and that _that damn Hibari was _still_ ignoring him, dammit._

"He means Enma," Reborn said simply, from Gokudera's shoulder. Tsuna froze.

_Enma._

Adelheid gave a twitch of annoyance. She put on a calm face, and waved her fan.

"Let's get this straight," she said flatly. "That despicable Vongola Boss is nothing like our Boss, Enma! Don't you _dare_ group them together!" She said, giving Tsuna a glare.

Tsuna looked back, helpless.

Hibari gave an assessing glance, before dead-panning. "Is there any difference, biologically speaking?" He asked, looking at the Tsuna and Gokudera for the first time.

"Eh?" Tsuna squeaked.

"What? Biology?" Gokudera squawked.

Hibari nearly rolled his eyes.

Nearly.

Adelheid however, was tired of watching Vongola drama playing out. "Enma isn't here, but since you came I shall defeat you. I challenge you, Hibari Kyoya."

"Fine by me," Hibari said with a shrug. "Previously in the fit on the roof, I saw how strong you were. You," he continued nonchalantly, "could never bite me to death."

"What?" Adelheid questioned, disbelieving.

"But well," Hibari continued in boredom before viciously smirking at her, "it's enough for me to vent out my frustration on a lump of meat."

Adelheid swiped the piece of hair from her face, since the breeze was blowing it into her eye. "Why you," she said in distaste, "It seems that you still don't know how fearsome the Shimon family is. Fight me. The rule will be decided with our Price. My pride is the Shimon family lead by Enma and the pursuit of Cleanliness!"

Hibari watched with mild interest.

"Deciding victory with pride? …You're a strange one. I've never once thought about pride but… It's not that difficult to answer." He squared his shoulders, letting his sleeve flap in the wind and showing off the Disciplinary Club's arm-band.

"The Discipline of Namimori Middle School, and cracking down on those who disturb it."

Gokudera was complaining loudly. "I knew it would definitely come to this!" He said, secretly _very_ irritated at the fact that how dramatic this all was. Juudaime hadn't looked at his own fight like that…

"Hibari is looking brilliant right now," Reborn muttered in his ear, and Gokudera shot him an annoyed glare into a smirk.

"Just as I thought. In that case, the rule is simple. Seize the arm-band." Adelheid paused, before continuing. "It's an extremely simple rule: The first one who gets the opponent's arm band is the winner. You can use any means necessary."

Hibari looked forward blankly. "I'm so irritated right now that anything that would distract me is fine."

"Well then, let's begin!" Adelheid clapped her hands, white flame bursting out of her ring. "My earth attribute is _glacier!" _Suddenly, the air became cold, and Adelheid had filled the air with ice crystals. "Come with me! Our stage is on the other side!" She jumped away, and they ran, following her down the path for half a minute or so.

Then she proceeded to jump off the steep cliff next to the path right into a large waterfall.

Gokudera stared.

"A waterfall!" He exclaimed, startled. He hadn't thought the island had been large enough to have one.

Adelheid shot her flames into the waterfall, freezing the water to slow her fall by dragging her fans through the ice. She landed safely onto a patch of frozen river.

"_What the hell is she?_" Gokudera shouted down the cliff, feeling a bit of vertigo just by looking down the cliff. Adelheid looked extremely small.

"She's strong," Reborn said absently, trying to distinguish what that white, lumpy rock was at the bottom of the cliff. "That's why she's virtually the leader of the Shimon Famiglia."

Hibari looked at the cliff, before glancing at Tsuna. He turned towards him.

"Little animal," he said to him. "Your face right now… is _dull_."

Tsuna withdrew into himself, shocked as he looked up into Hibari's face, to realise those sharp eyes were staring right at him. No-one had pointed it out to him yet, and Hibari had seen it… in the two minutes he had been there?

Did he know how to get rid of this, this disgusting feeling of being _lost?_

Hibari walked past Tsuna, looking straight into wide brown eyes.

"Watch my fight."

Tsuna stared, at Hibari's back as he just walked straight at the cliff and jumped down.

"That's…" Tsuna started, before widening his eyes at… _oh gosh, he just JUMPED DOWN A CLIFF_. "Hibari-san!"

Hibari just free fell with a strange sense of peace.

"Roll," he ordered out of his Vongola Gear. Roll appeared out of his bracelet, and flapped his legs ready to land on the ground… before realising it was falling.

"KUPIIII?" it squeaked, trying (and failing) to fly as Hibird flew next to it in support.

Hibari smiled gently at it.

"Don't be scared," he said softly to Roll, cradling it in a hand. "Needle sphere form, Roll."

"PIII!" Roll replied, giving a happy smile before exploding into two, four, thirty dangerous spiked purple spheres leading downwards. Hibari set his foot on the first one, before proceeding to jump down, using gravity to drive him downwards even as he slowed his fall.

He landed on the ground next to the river.

Adelheid was there, staring at him.

Hibari wasn't nearly as interested back, because right next to him, was yet another small lost person.

"I can see you, Sunglasses."

Bright yellow eyes opened in a thin face. Hibari frowned, ignoring Adelheid who was startled – that only proved how weak she was to him – because he realised that he didn't like that half-starved look on Sunglasses' face. It made her strange eyes look too large, made her look too weak.

There were simultaneous surprised shouts at the top of the cliff.

Alice winced, glancing up.

He did as well, inconspicuously. Hibari didn't betray how surprised he was at the Baby's expression – determination? Calculation? – but looked back at her anyway. Hibari reached into his pocket, and pulled out a lump of stone, before setting it before her. Thin hands made their way and picked them up, and without even instruction, the rock broke apart and light formed around her neck.

Interestingly enough, she was surprised at the form of her Vongola Gear.

A necklace.

Without prompting, she immediately started pulling flames out of her new necklace, grey flames shimmering into existence, covering her, and she promptly turned invisible.

Though it was only probably him that noticed that she looked too hungry to walk far.

When he turned around again, Adelheid was blinking.

"What just happened?"

He smirked, but didn't respond.

She visibly shook off her annoyance, before looking directly at him, refusing to be intimidated. "Go ahead and put on your Vongola Gear, Hibari Kyoya!"

Hibari absentmindedly scratched Roll's chin.

"Okay, I'll take you up on that offer. Roll, _Cambio Forma."_

Roll glowed purple.

* * *

When Adelheid jumped down, I simply closed my eyes. My eyes tied my existence to this plane – and I didn't think Adelheid was really strong enough to see me without my eyes.

Sure enough, she ignored me. She didn't even notice me.

_Score._

I shouldn't have rejoiced so happily, of course. I didn't even know if I could walk around this point in time – it wasn't as if I had much space to move of course and the people up there _(Tsuna. Tsuna was up there, my friend) _still didn't seem like they had noticed the little strange white dot snuggled up to the cliff.

A huge rumble.

Then a person landed to the right of me, landing heavily on two feet, knees bent nearly to the floor to absorb shock.

Hibari. It must have been Hibari.

There wasn't even a pause before he talked to me. Really, I smiled sardonically to myself, Adelheid expected to _beat_ this guy?

"I can see you, Sunglasses."

My first thought after that was that he was _still_ using that ridiculous nickname_?_

The second was to open my eyes and stare at him. He was there, looking tall and strong and healthy. I bit in a scowl, because really, he must eaten a good breakfast that day. I wanted food.

Then I head surprised shouts – Gokudera was the loudest. "_Freaky eyes!" _He yelled, before I heard Lambo crying something, and Tsuna, very faintly, say something. I winced and looked up.

Reborn was there. And it was what I suspected…

He was onto me.

And I had no weapons except for what, a few chopsticks? Two guns?

_The only thing separating me from him is a few metres of cliff. It's not nearly enough._

I was distracted, when Hibari reached, without turning, into a jacket pocket and pulled out a small lump of rock, before setting it positively _gently_ compared to some other actions, on the ground before me.

Clenching my fist, I found my hands weren't cold enough to not move, and reached forward shakily. I promptly scowled at my shaky fingers, then looked in interest at the thing that I had placed delicately on my palm.

How the heck did Hibari get his hands on my Vongola Gear?

I looked up at him, who was staring back down at me without haven't ever moved. His eyes were staring at my hands. Deciding to try ignore him and my sudden nervousness under his eyes, a burst of grey flames later, and the rock disappeared into a burst of light. The light settled around my neck, and the sudden heaviness was a little shock to the system.

A necklace made of interlinked stars, their points flaring like feathers reflecting my box-weapon, was wrapped around my throat, and it felt warm.

Oh my gosh.

_Warmth!_

I clutched it, drawing Star Flames out of it, and revelling in the warmth it gave when it covered me, and I turned invisible.

Hibari turned around, and I was really glad that he wasn't staring at me anymore. He had a heck of a poker face. I looked at this back for a little – because why the heck did Hibari get my Vongola Gear for me? – before looking down and picking up the piece of paper that he had placed underneath my VG.

I read it.

_Plan successful._

The smirk that grew over my face was near vicious.

I clenched my fist around it, before jerkily putting it in my pocket and starting to warm up my legs and arms, although always on alert for any wayward attacks from Adelheid, because strangely enough, I wasn't that worried about Hibari.

Strangely enough, no attacks were coming towards me. I was glad to have any spike of good luck these days, and ignored it.

Watching with an idle eye – and a bit alarmed as well, because woah, Hibari was one super-powered monster when he wanted to be – Hibird flew over to me and landed on my shoulder. I petted it with a finger, suppressing a smile at how it was perched on my _invisible_ shoulder.

Then Hibari really turned up the guns.

Adelheid had ensconced herself in the waterfall, far, far away, but even I could see how shocked she was to see those ice-droids that she had created being cut down _ten at a time_ by Hibari.

Five-hundred to one?

Mini-Hibari in my head scoffed in derision_. All in two minutes work, _Mini-Hibari drawled in my head.

And just on cue, Hibari started spinning, the ends of his tonfa propagating so fast that even though it seemed as if it should've taken at _least_ half a minute to reach an appropriate radius of thirty metres and at least longer since he was cutting through hundreds and hundreds of reinforced ice-torsos, he did in five seconds.

It was so fast, I didn't even have time to step backwards (and cursed myself, because what type of volunteer damsel-in-distress was I, if I really was in distress?) before the chain unexpectedly stopped propagating.

Hibird chirped happily in my ear.

I stared in shock, and saw sharp eyes looking at Hibird, before an imperceptible nod at where my head would be, and smirking up at Adelheid like _nothing had happened._

_The heck?_

I gently plucked Hibird from my shoulder, and put it on a nearby boulder even as I ditched the blankets, since my Star Flames kept me warm, and blinked at the (additional) realisation that made everything so much more infinitely complicated, because Hibari _had been protecting me._

So it wasn't my good luck after all, that I didn't get mortal injury for once?

But before that thought could even sink into my consciousness, there was a gunshot, and a flash of green. Leon landed in front of me, bouncing on the frozen surface of the river (courtesy of Adelheid) even as Hibari just finished cracking Adelheid's 'impenetrable' ice castle.

Leon bounced, and stared at me, before promptly forming into a trampoline.

Then a Reborn-shaped black dot jumped off the cliff, straight at Leon-the-trampoline. Before that small dot was even halfway down, I had began desperately drawing Star flames out of my necklace, and Hawk came out with Falcon.

Falcon went down with a bullet to its left leg. There were confused shouts, as Tsuna yelled at Reborn, shocked silence at Adelheid's end because she had lost (totally expected. Hibari was scary strong) and Hawk, even as it grew bigger, scooped me onto it's back and we flew straight upwards, and I willed Hawk to turn invisible too.

Then Reborn twisted in midair, and using the bounce from the Leon-trampoline, bounced up and actually _caught Hawk's tail._

I was reminded just why Reborn was the best hitman in the world, just when I reached my objective.

Hawk gave a screech, as it collapsed on the path on top of the cliff, right next to Gokudera and deposited me straight in front of Tsuna.

I was up, and shakily shed off the Star Flames, and Lambo bounded up into my arms even while Gokudera spluttered and Tsuna _smiled _at me, and all this happened before Reborn flipped neatly onto Tsuna's head.

And I knew I had won the first round, breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the Vindice came.

* * *

**Yo Dudes!**

**It's been crazy. School, that is. I have two essays! Just for English! Then a heck tonne of work into maths, because I absolute fail at that, and then economics is calling for study, and English Ext 2 is giving me a headache. And don't get me started on music.**

**GAAAAH**

**So thank you all for giving such kind reviews! They light up my day, really. And since I'm Sleepy... XD (I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Lots of thinking this time. Don't think Reborn is going to let this go though. And poor Hibari... but detail into that next chapter. MUAHAHAHAHA manic laughter that well, comes from sleep deprivation. Later!)**


	59. can bring down the pillars

**Nana Special**

Nana sometimes looked at I-pin and Lambo as her new children because she felt guilty when she looked at her own son. Because every child should be loved whole-heartedly by their parents, and she had tried to do that. She wasn't a bad parent – everyone who knew her would tell her that.

"_It's not your fault, Nana-san! Some kids are just a bit slow," _they said when she confessed she was worried over Tsuna's grades when he was seven.

"_It's not your fault, Nana-san! Your son should know better and study harder," _they said when she asked them what she could do when Tsuna kept reading manga instead of doing the maths books she bought for him.

"_Your son should be working harder for _you_, not the other way around_," they assured when she finished cleaning the house for the second time that week, and looked at Tsuna's room and heard him gently snoring.

She loved her son, she truly did. Her heart was filled with love, with warmth and happiness when she first held him as a baby, the first puffs of brown down-soft hair on his head. She was a romantic, she was young (twenty-one when she married Iemitsu, twenty-two when she had Tsuna), she had a stable income, and her husband, she glanced at him softly through her eyelashes and held up the baby to him, was the most handsome man she knew and had swept her off her feet so dizzyingly fast.

She didn't know what he did though. She didn't understand that softness of his face when he held Tsuna, the fear, the love, the hard glint in his eyes or the determined glance of his jaw at both Tsuna and herself.

A week later, she left the hospital carrying Tsuna and her husband leading her into a town near a mountain in one of the richer places of Japan.

Nana had a large house. She had her first born baby. She was financially secure, young, and had such a life waiting for her. She was so _happy._

A week after that her husband had disappeared, and she was young, her first-born child was crying and she didn't know what to do, and the large house seemed just so empty. A few weeks later, her husband came back with a strange bruise on his hip, and at night when she was struggling to get to sleep but faking some for Iemitsu's benefit, she felt his hand stroking her hair and muttering 'I'm sorry, Nana. I'm so sorry."

And with that, she found she couldn't hate him at all and she was just as in love with him as she was two years ago. She was a romantic, an incurable one.

But her mother had told her to be a strong woman, and she was. So the next day, she cut her hair, and just remarked that she was going to be strong, and had no time for such frivolities with a bright smile on her face.

Iemitsu's face flashed with pain, and he hugged her.

Tsuna cried, and she had to go to him to change his nappy. This time, Iemitsu followed her and they cared for him together.

The next day, he was gone again with a note.

It didn't matter; she gritted her teeth as she remembered his muttered words over her head last night, before rubbing her eyes because she liked sleeping in.

Iemitsu was in just as much pain as she was.

It didn't matter if she didn't get her perfect life. Didn't matter if they didn't spend as much time together as she wanted, no riding into the sunsets and immediate happy endings. She still had a son, and he was going to be the best son she could ever want.

Iemitsu kept coming and going, and every time he came he stopped by it made her feel slightly ashamed that sometimes, just _sometimes_ she felt a bit resentful of her choice to marry so young. It had been her choice, their choice. She remembered Iemitsu's grave face as she said she wanted to marry him.

"_Are you sure, Nana?"_ he had asked.

"_Yes."_

She would live by her choice. Her love for Iemitsu was strong. It could go through anything.

It was when Tsuna was around five, when Nana realised maybe her son couldn't be everything she wanted him to be. He was a bit smaller than the others, and picked up his lessons a bit slower than normal. But that was okay, she accepted with a smile. He was a bit clumsy, and maybe his reluctance to go to school was a bit suspicious, but that was fine.

She was fine. If Tsuna grew up to be the son she had envisioned to be, then it was fine, because then she had become the mother she had dreamt to be all those years ago (Tsuna was eight now, right? She was thirty now. She wasn't young anymore, and that was a strange thought. Where had all that time gone? She had somehow imagined her years more full of smiles than this).

When Tsuna was eleven, Nana realised one day that he didn't smile at her anymore. He had a lot more bruises than usual, he was tired. His grades were down to the thirties.

She gently asked what was wrong.

Tsuna, her _son_, her reason for _living_ like this, losing so much _(or was it really losing her life, when she had made the choice by herself? But now, she was wiser. She was thirty-three now)_, he looked at her with a slight exasperated frown on his face and said nothing.

The next time Iemitsu came, she realised they really couldn't be the family she had envisioned herself to be in, the happy three-person family.

Tsuna… Tsuna _disliked_ Iemitsu.

Why?

The next time she got Tsuna's grades _(now down to the twenties),_ the next time she saw another strange bruise _(Tsuna didn't even look at her now except for breakfast)_, the next time she tried to ask him to try harder _(she got a pained glance)_, she looked at herself in the mirror, pasted a smile on her face and went out to fetch the mail because she automatically woke up at five in the morning now.

Why?

What had she done _wrong_?

Because now, in her mid-thirties, if she wasn't a mother then _what was she?_

One day, she realised she had given up. But a mother should always love her children, so she tried to be encouraging in her own way. She tried to tell Tsuna she would always be there.

It just always turned out wrong. She tried to tell Tsuna that she would always be there to support him, even if he didn't match up to the competitive schooling in Japan, not tell him that he was useless. That was the last thing that she wanted.

Nana noticed how Tsuna never had friends over, never smiled much anymore, didn't like going to school, liked lazing around in his bed, liked sleeping in, whined about his chores.

But a small irrepressible part of her, worn down by one and a half decades, had withered and died. She didn't know what to do. A small part of her still felt like she was twenty-one, a new baby in hand, an empty house to take care of.

Then one day a strange baby in a suit came over, smiled at Nana, and said he would fix everything up for her.

She remembered Iemitsu staying home for a few months before, and remembered a flash of black and orange leaping out the window.

Nana couldn't kneel down on her knees fast enough to say _please._

Then another day, Tsuna brought friends over. More and more people came into her house. From the youngest, I-pin and Lambo, Fuuta, Bianchi, Reborn, and so many, many more. A cute girl named Kyoko came (and Tsuna had the cutest blush when he looked at her), and another girl suddenly came to help cook Tsuna a bento, apparently madly in love with her _son_.

And Tsuna had friends.

He had _friends._

There was the explosive, angry silver-headed Italian who always blushed and bowed to her so many times it was somewhat rude in Japanese etiquette, but she knew he had good intentions so fed him as much as she could. She gave him a hug once, saying such a large thank you in her head for being her son's friend. He stiffened, and patted her back gently.

There was the sushi-shop owner's son, whose bright cheery laugh and happiness always seemed to calm Tsuna down. Make him happy, make him laugh like she never could. From Tsuna's ramblings, he was a good-natured, peaceful, kind of oblivious child who loved baseball and his friends. Nana was thankful, and once went to the sushi-shop and gave one of her best home-made pies to his father. His father just shook his head, and smiled, and said 'no, it should be I thanking you. Your son saved mine'.

Nana widened her eyes before smiling brightly, bowing, and leaving.

There was that girl with the sharp eyes, yellow and haunted in a way that she saw Iemitsu's were sometimes. She worried about her, that girl who smiled fake-smiles nearly all the time, and seemed impassive the other times. But then she saw how being around her _son_ made most of the tension go away, and she wondered and smiled and smothered her in her motherly love as much as she could.

(She realised all three of them didn't have mothers, and tried to make up for it as hard as she could. Suddenly, she felt like she was the mother of all of her son's friends.)

The empty house wasn't empty anymore. She could always hear I-pin's voice yelling at Lambo, Lambo whining, Bianchi humming in the kitchen and Reborn's tones in Tsuna's bedroom with the occasional yell and explosion (she didn't mind overly much, because she knew Reborn would never harm Tsuna. Walls could always be replaced. He had given her so much, it was only fair).

It all culminated to that one Mothers day, when all of her new family was sitting around her, and Tsuna blushed and looked down at the floor and was so _awkward_ and _adorable_ while shoving a few nearly wilting flowers in her face that she felt her heart nearly break from the sheer love she felt.

The next day, Tsuna's eyes weren't accusing anymore, and she saw it for what it was. Teenage awkwardity.

She smiled.

(She still had the flowers, pressed in the heaviest dictionary she could find. She showed them to Iemitsu, who gave her that warm smile that made her fall in love in the first place)

Although she didn't approve of how Reborn had dragged Tsuna into Iemitsu's world… But seeing how Tsuna was so much more alive, like how he had found his purpose in living now, not drifting as before…

One day, Iemitsu came back, hugged her, and asked in that grave voice of his, a bit of fear staining his tone—

"Was it worth it, Nana?"

She could smile, nod, and say the most heartfelt 'yes' in her whole life.

* * *

Tsuna smiled at me, before staring at Hibari in awe, mouthing the words

'_So pride is the thing that we can't give up…'_

And I clung to Lambo like a lifeline even as I sank to the ground in exhaustion just from moving so much.

Damn hunger pains.

Lambo blinked innocently at me, before offering one of his grape candy. I blinked back at him in surprise.

"Lambo-sama knows what it's like to be hungry," he said (or whined, you couldn't tell with Lambo) and I said a quiet thank you and sucked on the sugar.

And quietly I sat to 'enjoy' the show and ran facts through my head.

Chrome was kidnapped because Daemon wanted Mukuro's body. I was presumably kidnapped because of something Wend wanted to do with me. I nodded. At least that was clear.

Next.

Adelheid, Enma and everyone was working on the assumption that Giotto betrayed Cozart. This was ridiculous, of course, even if you didn't see the memories. Giotto was _famous_ for not abandoning anybody. Now, watching the memories, it was even clearer. Giotto, Alayne, G and Cozart were such besties that they trusted each other with more than their life.

Now, watching the fourth memory as Adelheid was being captured, it was even clearer.

"_Giotto wanted to save Cozart!" _Tsuna yelled presumably down to Adelheid. Her eyes were shocked, as she shook her head.

"_No, impossible!"_

Next.

Tsuna was clearly on my side. Reborn clearly was not. I had to find a way to persuade him, but not now when I was so darn hungry. And there was a small concerning thing at the back of my mind, because I wondered how Yamamoto found this place to save Kaoru later on when the island was so _big_…

I put Lambo down, giving him a pat on the afro and returned Falcon as I took advantage of the commotion that everyone was making.

"_Chrome!" _Nearly everyone exclaimed, and her eyes were empty as she stood behind Katou Julie. I tried to pry Lambo off my leg, where he had started clinging.

Chrome was silent.

"_You did a good job, Adelheid," _Julie said, his face cracking into a grin. Adelheid gave a relieved sigh.

"_Julie! You'll take care of Shimon, won't you?"_

And everyone watched in horror as Julie's face melted into Daemon's…

Hawk was there, and in a blink, I was invisible and in the air.

With Lambo still on my leg.

Damn it.

Next.

Lambo was trying to be annoying and shoving grape lollies into my mouth. The sentiment was appreciated, but annoying.

Shoving the fifth lolly he was trying to pry my mouth open to fit more in, I shoved it into his own mouth instead. Ha, beat that!

Okay.

Next.

Wend would probably be arranging something, but that something was probably not something that would come into fruition. After all, Hibari's note underneath my Vongola Gear had said _Plan successful_. Therefore, Kusakabe in his helicopter should have left Wend…

Oh shoot, I didn't know where. Hibari and I didn't talk it out enough. Damn it.

Okay, that could be dealt with later.

Next.

Daemon had obvious connections to Vindice. Usually Vindice and Brighteyes avoided each other – but this time, since I was forced to be in close proximity with them, there was a strange thing I couldn't let go of.

Why did Vindice help Daemon again? It wasn't as if they would get any personal gain from Mukuro borrowing the right to use the Black Flame.

Why?

…Too hungry to think. Next.

I think I just saw Yamamoto.

I swooped down, and landed right in front of Yamamoto, who was blundering at the forest with another guy who was lugging a picnic basket, of all things. I slid the flame off so we could become visible – Yamamoto and Grey (OHMIGOSH GREY) had their weapons out and ready, but soon smiled and relaxed when they recognised us.

"Alice!" Yamamoto greeted. "Haha, your grandpa here helicoptered me here, but then we didn't know where all of you were so we walked around a little!"

He grinned sheepishly and scratched his head.

Since the last time I saw him was when he was bloody and half-dead…

I slid off Hawk and hugged him.

"You stupid idiot. You're going the wrong way," I scowled as I let go.

Yamamoto looked surprised at me, which wasn't strange because I rarely hugged people, before clapping me on the shoulder.

"Sorry, haha."

"Grey, I'm hungry."

And Grey grinned, before hoisting his picnic basket onto the ground, and opening it. I nearly fell forward from my eagerness to get to the basket, and Grey only chuckled.

"I had a feeling you would want this, Miss."

I was too busy stuffing a hard-boiled egg into my mouth to reply. After swallowing it, I waved vaguely at them to ride on Hawk, who I made bigger by joining the flames that I had took from Falcon earlier into him. Yamamoto just shrugged, before clambering onto his back. Grey jumped on, and I followed with Lambo practically in the basket happily stuffing his face with me.

"This is really good!" Lambo muttered through a full mouth. I didn't bother reprimanding him.

"Yeah," I said, my mouth equally stuffed.

Lambo seemed delighted at my rule breaking. Brat.

Just when I awkwardly clambered on with the basket on my right arm, Lambo on my left, and trying to stuff my mouth full of cheese-sandwiches all at the same time that Yamamoto glanced at my neck and grinned.

I couldn't even get annoyed at his stupid grin because I couldn't forget that feeling at the hospital where I thought I wouldn't see it forever.

"I see your Vongola Gear is a choker, Alice!"

I choked on the 'choker' bit.

"No, Yamamoto," I said slowly like he was an idiot. "I don't wear chokers. This is a necklace."

Yamamoto nodded brainlessly (he did that on purpose. I _swear_) as if he agreed with me. "Haha, then it would be the same as mine! I have a necklace as well!"

He showed it off, and I grinned.

"Ha, mine's a necklace Yamamoto, because yours is a _pendant_. Therefore, I can fill the necklace spot."

Yamamoto kind of… chuckle/giggled at me. In a manly way, but it was still kind of a giggle? What the hell?

"But… Alice. A pendant sounds a bit girly," he giggled at the last part. "I have a reputation to keep, you know?"

I suppressed my smile.

"A choker sounds too girly. Therefore I get the necklace call, okay?"

I patted Hawk to let it know I wanted to land near the trees next to the waterfall, and Hawk simply started to glide down.

"But you're a girl, Alice. It shouldn't matter."

…Oh yeah.

"But still, necklace sounds so much better."

Yamamoto laughed, and Grey just poured a drink without spilling anything, even with Hawk's bumpy flapping. Wow, Grey really was super-Grey.

"Drinks, Miss, Yamamoto-san?"

"Thanks!"

"Thank you, Grey," I said as I accepted it. Just as I finished (feeling so much fuller and happier in ages) the cup, Hawk landed. I closed my eyes and listened for the waterfall, even as I shrunk Hawk and put the flames around us. Yamamoto shivered and stared at the Flames coating his skin in a kind of awe.

I waited for his comment even as I got ready to face yet another life-threatening situation.

Yamamoto's face grew solemn.

Hm?

"Wow, my skin is sparkly!"

I hit my head on a tree, and just marched forward.

"Let's go, you two."

Lambo clung to me like a limpet, so I just kept on patting his hair.

* * *

"Are you sure you're okay though, Yamamoto?"

"Hm?" his voice floated pleasantly somewhere behind me. It was hard getting used to walking around invisible (I mean, where were your feet?) but somehow the two people behind me got used to it faster than _I_ had. Which was expected. And totally didn't make me jealous, of course.

…

Damn those talented people who could get things first try and didn't have to try hard.

"Kaoru is going to be there."

"…How do you know? Wait, haha, that's not important right now right?"

Yamamoto seemed to be scratching his cheek. He seemed the type to do so.

"He's my friend, you know? He didn't seem like he _wanted_ to do it. In the few weeks I knew him… he's not the type of guy to kill with no reason. I want to understand him first, before judging. I mean, I'm still alive right?"

There was a smile in his voice.

When I closed my eyes, I could see the jaded features of the older Yamamoto on the picnic blanket, with none of that brightness in his voice.

I sighed.

"Yamamoto… never change."

"Huh?"

"Nothing. We're here."

I stopped abruptly, and Yamamoto bumped into me. I shushed his apology, and tuned in on the last of Daemon's ranting.

Because he was _still_ ranting. How much did he like hearing himself talk? The weirdo.

The situation we walked into was dire though. Tsuna and everyone else were trapped in what seemed like Chrome's barrier. Kaoru was on the ground, staring at Daemon, who in turn, was going on about how he used the four-hundred years of his life looking after the Vongola, and trying to tear it down, and blah di blah…

Kaoru attacked Daemon the second time.

Yamamoto tensed.

Daemon tossed Kaoru aside, turning on him with murder in his eyes.

"You're starting to get annoying—"

And Yamamoto leapt out, his sword at the ready, Jirou and Kojirou prepared, and saved Kaoru's life.

I could only smile, and step out, but still in the shadow. I didn't wish to fight Vindice. Not right now. I had to reach Hibari, to see where he had placed Wend.

I watched from the shadows, ignoring Hibari's acknowledgement that I was there, therefore alerting Reborn.

Reborn couldn't control his surprise. He thought I had escaped, and didn't think to come back. But I had Grey's reassuring presence behind me now, I thought as I stuffed some nuts into my mouth, and Lambo was here in my arms. He couldn't do anything yet. He needed me alone to do… what I think he wanted to do.

That was the main reason why I had been so desperate to reach Tsuna after all.

Reborn _especially_ wouldn't do anything to me in front of Tsuna, because Tsuna would be torn between us, and Reborn wouldn't want that.

One could say Reborn was… _nice_ that way.

I gave a real grape to Lambo, who scrunched his face and put it back into the basket in favour of a grape lolly he dug out from somewhere.

* * *

I watched emotionlessly as Adelheid and Kaoru were dragged away by Vindice. I didn't have to feel anything. They would be safe.

Reborn's eyes watched.

Grey put a hand on my shoulder.

* * *

"Hibari," I muttered to him as he lay down on a patch of grass in the sunshine like a huge cat. "Where did you put Wend?"

His grey eyes opened, amazingly without annoyance. Maybe he really was that sleepy.

"Those annoying herbivore were loitering on school grounds. Since I had took out the fighter, the other one was easy to restrain. The only thing that was interesting about him was that he kept getting up after getting hit."

His eyes narrowed.

"Tell me."

"Later. Tell me where he is."

"Tell me _first."_

…Hibari, this was not the time to be childish.

"Gah, just tell me where they are!"

"On the most western point of the island on the beach," he said unexpectedly.

I stood up, and got ready to fly. Hawk screeched, and I forced Lambo into Yamamoto's arms as I surreptiously got onto Hawk again. Reborn was staring at me. Again.

What did he _want_ from me? I know he thought I was traitor, but… What the heck could I do to gain trust again?

"Tsuna," I interrupted some random conversation. His large eyes stared at me, and I looked at him. Before smiling. He looked healthier and happier than I thought he would have been. "I'm going somewhere with Grey. Don't worry about me, okay? I don't want anyone following me."

"Where are you going?" He asked.

I found I couldn't lie to those eyes.

"Wend."

Tsuna's eyes widened. "No, we'll all go with you!"

I shook my head.

"Hibari got Wend covered before he came here. He's restrained right now, but it's private Family business. You understand, right?"

"No, but I respect your privacy, Alice." He looked at me, and put a hand on my shoulder.

I was shocked to find he was as tall as me now.

"Stay safe," he said, before breaking out into that awkward, shy grin of his. "We were really worried about you, you know? I was really scared, and I'm really glad at least one of you escaped Daemon's brain washing."

The smile dimmed.

This time, I put my hand on his as I removed it, and dropping it gently so his hand swung back to its normal position at his side.

"Chrome will be fine. I have to go now."

_Wend. What can I do about you? What can I ever say?_

Reborn kept staring, even as I turned my back on them and climbed onto Hawk where Grey was waiting.

Hibari was too. I frowned at him, and he just yawned back.

"Tell me."

I nearly gaped at him, even as Hawk took flight.

He was _still_ on about that?

* * *

Wend was, as promised, on the beach, tied up with so many handcuffs it wasn't funny. As I had explained an extremely vague version of events as to why Wend was immortal, but no fighter, and why Jared was with him Hibari was supremely irritated. But before he even got the chance to growl and attack me, I jumped down from Hawk when he swooped, and when Hibari made to follow me I ordered Hawk into a large climb.

It didn't work, and Hibari landed next to me with a soft _flump_.

I scowled. His irritation was balanced with a smug grin, as he blatantly _yawned_ at me. I scowled before sighing.

"Grey."

"Yes," he said and pulled out a phone.

"Anise. Yes, I've got him. Wend. Please track the coordinates of this phone. Thank you."

Wend just looked blearily up at me, his right cheek bruised.

"Not much of a fair fighter, are you little Brighteye?"

I crouched, as I stared at him in the face.

"I've thought a lot these days. About how I needed to fight you, how you were immortal. How you _became_ immortal, and how we didn't really need to be opponents. Not really."

"The Vindice would come take you, you know."

"No they wouldn't." I said simply.

Wend frowned at me, his white eyes somehow dominating his whole face so I couldn't really remember anything about him at all. I stared at him sadly, wondering if this was what happened when us fake angels fell from grace. Living like a ghost, where none could remember him. I thought about what Elena meant to him, and what might have happened if I had met Jack, my little brother in this world.

Maybe Jack would have been involved in the Mafia. Maybe even in the Vongola Family. There, he met this pretty girl that he wanted to marry. Became friends with me, close enough that we really were like siblings again. Then, because of me not wanting 'to ruin the plot' one of the many deaths that Tsuna's story had accidently caused was Jack's.

Then I went mad. Suicided, because the reason that I was going through all this was to meet my family again, and what was the point when I couldn't even protect a family member right _in front of me?_ Then cursed never to die, never to go to Heaven. What would be the point of my life then?

Sadly enough, that was a direction that I could see myself going into.

Any Brighteye going into.

It just had to be the right person to meet, after all. Every person had their trigger.

Liza's would have been her fiancé. Mine would have been any of my family, really. I didn't know My tutor Jack's or Anise's, but they both were pretty driven to succeed their Trial. They probably had people too.

Wend was just lucky.

"No, Vindice wouldn't come," I elaborated at Wend's slightly confused look. "You weren't a part of the Shimon Family anyway. You were under Daemon, who was Vongola. I'm Vongola. It's not a Shimon and Vongola spat, it's a Vongola Vongola, or more specifically – a Brighteye Brighteye spat. They wouldn't come."

"I don't really even know why I was so stressed out about our fight," I mused as I sat down next to his tied up form. Grey was stopping Hibari from reaching us behind us, which was a blessing.

I settled down to watch the sunset. I placed Wend too, so he could enjoy the view.

"Pretty isn't it?"

Wend snorted.

"Once you've seen one, you've seen them all."

There was silence for awhile.

"Why do you want to ruin other people's Trials, Wend?"

Another reply of silence, so I took it as a sign to keep rambling.

"You know, I thought about it a lot. I thought I was trapped into fighting an immortal, invincible monster that I didn't know how to defeat at all. Then Mukuro gave me this cryptic hint that I didn't have to beat you physically, but _mentally_. I was like, hey, mental? I could apply that to myself because then I realised I didn't need to fight you at all," I rambled as I stared into the red clouds. "I was just trapped into thinking I _had_ to fight you, because that's what I did with Belle."

I winced at the thought of Belle.

Scrunching a bit of sand in my hand, and I threw it forward into the sea. It didn't go anywhere far enough.

"Wend, are you like that too? Do you really need someone to break that mental barrier for you?"

Wend was just staring into the sunset like I was. I breathed in. The sea smelt a bit sticky and salty and clean.

"I don't approve of what you did to Jared. And Red. Heck, I don't even know his real name, but you twisted Red into jumping into a river burning and poisoned just to get the satisfaction of knowing that someone did successfully protect someone else? What was that for? They loved each other, like you and Elena."

"Don't talk to me about Elena," he said coldly. "You know nothing."

"But I do," I pressed on. "You have another forty-nine people who could understand you. You just never listened."

"There is no point. You are all going to disappear, and then I would be left alone again."

_Alone again…_

Don't tell me.

"Were you ruining people's Trials so you wouldn't be lonely anymore?"

"No."

The water rippled. It was strangely calm, talking to my nearly-enemy. Who had kidnapped me, and made Jared into an empty shell, supported Daemon, and had made countless people suffer. Hadn't he suffered enough?

But it wasn't about weighing suffering. It was about atoning.

"Wend. Do you get what you did?"

Because right now, Wend wasn't the nutcase his file set him out to be. A mortal mind couldn't handle immortality - who said that? He was a man much too old, who had suffered so much that he couldn't even be insane to escape it. Right now, he was just the one who had 'lost' our battle, handcuffs wrapped around everywhere except for his head courtesy of Hibari, and now he was staring out into the sunset.

It was starting to darken now. Dusk, then.

"I—never realised that a sunset could be so beautiful."

_I never thought I deserved to see sunsets as beautiful again._

"Well they are," I said simply.

We began to see a helicopter fly towards us.

"Anticlimactic, isn't it?" I remarked idly, drawing a circle with my right foot and a square with my left. "I thought this would go into an epic fight, with all guns drawn and yelling across the battlefield, and me adding another life-threatening injury to my list of severe injuries. But even without fighting it's all over."

Wend didn't deign to answer the question.

"Your story is nearly over, isn't it?" He asked me. "I remember, since I stole your books. After this, there's going to another fight to resolve the Arcobaleno's issue and then you will turn sixteen, and then…" he narrowed his eyes. "With the amount of Grey Flames left, you'll have two weeks, at the most, after your birthday. How fast have you been using them?" He asked with slight surprise.

I gave a wry grin.

"Very fast."

"Remember, Alice."

He used my name, I gave a tiny start of surprise. I looked at him.

His eyes were solemn, and were practically the only thing that I could see.

"The Brighteye mantra. _Don't get too close."_

I closed my eyes in response. "I already thought about that."

"Have you really?" He asked cryptically even as the helicopter landed and two Brighteyes I've only ever met once or twice nodded at me, and lugged Wend onto a stretcher where he was born away. I got up and followed him, ignoring how sand was getting into my shoes.

It was twilight now.

"Wend. I'll keep talking to you, even if I'm going to die in four weeks or so," I said. "Mukuro told me I was probably the only one that could get through to you. I don't know why."

Wend smiled, tired.

"Maybe. I've done too much already. Maybe it's time to give up."

The line of my jaw hardened, and I immediately reached out and grabbed his hand. The two unnamed Brighteyes paused, looking at me curiously. I tightened my grip, digging my nails into his palm as he looked at me wearily. My eyes blazed, as I let go when I was sure, _sure_, that I had his attention.

"It's never the time to give up."

* * *

**And there goes the REALLY TENSE battle between Wend and Alice. Don't worry, he's not gone yet. He has a rather large role to play - which is why he isn't dead and the battle was what I BET no-one was expecting. Sorry for people who were excited about it though.**

**The Nana special was made in response to people saying how Nana was a bad mother, kinda like how the Tsuna special was in response to people writing Tsuna as the perfect angel all the time. Sure, Nana wasn't the perfect mother, and maybe she only started acting motherish after Tsuna started changing. But people don't understand what parents go through to love their children. Children are such a large part of their lives sometimes parents give their whole life to their children. They're human. Nana, in my headcanon, would have been just as disappointed in herself as in Tsuna because of how he turned out. And Nana looked young. Imagining having your first child. You wouldn't know what to do, and people learn by mistake right?**

**Who wouldn't want to reward their son for changing for the better?**

**I am a teenager. I am not a mother. Just saying. I'm just saying... what gives us children the right to judge what makes a good parent? We only ever have two in our lives, no matter how crappy or how wonderful they are. Do we compare? Do we gripe and hate our parents for being too controlling, not caring, not loving, loving too much... when they are only human themselves? I firmly believe that adults are only children who have lived longer.**

**We don't know what the future brings, guys. When we're in their position, who says we wouldn't do the same thing? I just get angry, when people say something like 'Nana is a crap mother because she didn't care about Tsuna and neglected bullying and blah di blah' while sometimes humans are just indecisive. Sure, the perfect parent would have stopped all that. But is everyone perfect all the time? Can we be there for our most precious people at the exact right time, right place, do the right decision and say the exactly the right things all. The. Time?**

**Never.**

**Sorry for that rant. I just had to get that out there. I know this is controversial, and many people might not agree. I understand there are truly horrible people out there, but I haven't met any yet and I agree I may be naive. A bit stupid to type this. Maybe a bit too genuine in my opinion. But I like seeing the best in people, even if I'm sometimes a grump in real life. I myself don't have the perfect relationship with my parents. But communication takes two parties, so we're getting there slowly. But walking forward is being better than being blindfolded.**

**Please review, and if you have an argument to say that Nana truly is a bad parent, please tell me why. I know most people don't like reading deep stuff like this, and I'm sorry. But in my mind it's true, and I hope it rings true for many of you out there. **

**Thank you for reading this. **


	60. that tie down fate

**Here's a recap - because it has been a long time. **

**_LAST CHAP_**

**_"Not much of a fair fighter, are you little Brighteye?"_**

**_"I've thought a lot these days. About how I needed to fight you, how you were immortal. How you became immortal, and how we didn't really need to be opponents. Not really."_**

**_Wend frowned at me_**

**_"Your story is nearly over, isn't it?" He asked me. "I remember, since I stole your books. After this, there's going to another fight to resolve the Arcobaleno's issue and then you will turn sixteen, and then…" he narrowed his eyes. "With the amount of Grey Flames left, you'll have two weeks, at the most, after your birthday. How fast have you been using them?" He asked with slight surprise._**

**_"Very fast."_**

**_"Remember, Alice."_**

**_"The Brighteye mantra. Don't get too close."_**

**_"Wend. I'll keep talking to you, even if I'm going to die in four weeks or so," I said. "Mukuro told me I was probably the only one that could get through to you. I don't know why."_**

**_Wend smiled, tired._**

**_"Maybe. I've done too much already. Maybe it's time to give up."_**

**_"It's never the time to give up."_**

* * *

The sunset turned into night. No-one approached me, and I sensed Grey go away with Hibari and soon after come back without him. I was sure he had uncomfortable questions for me (since we didn't talk _that_ softly) and… I dunno.

I just sat there staring at the night sky with all its stars and felt _wow. I never noticed this before._

The sky was so _vast_. It seemed to go forever and ever; staring up at it, I felt dizzy and the stars seemed like they were spinning around my head and when I looked down, the sky blended into the sea, until the sea became water that lapped at my feet and receded back to try and grab a bit more land with its white, foamy, disintegrating hands.

I had never really sat down and appreciated how big the world was. Maybe I had been accepting this world in stages. First, accepting my duty. Then humanity. Then accepting how the world didn't revolve around me or Tsuna – that it was _big_.

Now, I could finally sit down and appreciate the world itself.

…I wouldn't have been able to before, I don't think. Remembering myself a few years back…

Smiling and collapsing on my back, I relished the coldness of the sand and just smelt the sea.

That fact didn't bother me as much as it should have, surprisingly. It wasn't something to pull a melodramatic fit about. It wasn't as if I was forgetting my family – it was just me finally accepting that I led another life here (even if that life was full of craziness and crap that was way too much for a normal teen to deal with. Or a twenty-three year old young adult. But I didn't feel twenty-three, but that way lays many headaches, so…).

I closed my eyes.

I appreciated life. I appreciated nature. I thought about both things. I wondered about life (again). Then fate. Then The Plot.

And promptly panicked.

"Grey!" I stood up abruptly and walked towards Grey and Hibari. "We need to go and deliver Hibari back _right now_. He needs his sleep."

Grey smiled, and nodded, and Hawk gave a happy screech. I checked his Star flames absentmindedly. Those flames were still good to go for another few hours. Smiling, I made to climb up Hawk's back before staring and going slack-jawed at the face Hibari was making.

"Hibari… are you _pouting?_"

Hibari merely raised an eyebrow, as if condemning me for even considering he would ever do a lowly _pout_, and merely turned his nose at me before jumping on Hawk with one smooth movement. That I could never pull off.

It was my turn to nearly-pout.

"Just because you're tall," I grumbled (and Hibari smirked at me, I _swear_ he did), "does not mean you don't _sulk_, Hibari."

His hands tightened on his tonfas even as I slowly clambered onto Hawk's back (with help from Hawk's beak).

Oops. Danger sign.

"I don't _sulk_. And I can decide for myself when I should sleep. You can't order me," he said through a deceptively calm voice.

"Sorry, Hibari. I wasn't trying to do that there," I said realising the exact reason _why_ he was sulk-pouting. "It's just that, err… you're going to be really important in tomorrow's fight?"

He relaxed, eyes still narrowed.

"And how do you know that, little _Brighteye?"_

…Well, he was bound to find out I was Brighteye from somewhere. It wasn't exactly hidden knowledge. I mean, my eyes were yelling out a very clear sign that said 'hey! Brighteye here! Shoot me, I glow in the dark!' kind of message.

"Well, if you know I'm Brighteye, it's self-explanatory?"

Hibari was steady.

"No, it doesn't."

Something in his tone made me turn around, suspicion starting to lurk in my mind. "Why are you being so persistent?"

Hibari smirked.

"Can't you find out yourself, Brighteye? Your reputation exceeds you. But I, however, do not have your means. Tell me." He pushed, his arms shifting stance, and I moved myself defensively to match. A glint in Hibari's eyes approved.

"Tell me."

Just then Grey jumped onto Hawk's back as well and smiled at us.

"Shall we, Miss? Hibari-san?"

Hibari scowled, thwarted as he measured Grey and me up.

Ha!

I knew I loved Grey for a reason!

* * *

I unceremoniously dumped Hibari off Hawk's back when we reached campsite, and despite his precautions, he fell off (gracefully, mind you, landing on his feet and all). He glared at me, before walking (still gracefully) to his patch of flowers and flumped down. Then he proceeded to 'fall asleep'.

I doubted someone like Hibari could fall asleep in hostile enemy territory so easily. If I landed for even half a millisecond, he would probably just get on Hawk again like some zombie on a sneak attack in the dark. With fangs and an aversion to sunlight and everything. And a cape. Can't have a zombie without a cape. Gnawing on anti-garlic, of course.

Wait… were those things called zombies?

"Grey," I said contemplatively as I scanned the campground underneath us. There was slight smoke rising from their campfire, as the embers glowed with a dull red that I could see from above. Tsuna was curled close to the fire, Gokudera close to him on his right hand side. Yamamoto was across from them with Reborn near his head, I think. Hibari was there, in his patch of grass, and, narrowing my eyes a little more, Lambo was sleeping near Tsuna's head.

I stifled a chuckle. If Lambo slept any closer, his hair would be a bit _too_ warm for his taste, I bet.

But whatever floats his boat. He was cute that way.

Nodding to myself, my hand directed Hawk to wheel over the campsite another two times, before I flew into the forest.

It was time to make myself scarce. Wend was out of the way. They shouldn't need me now. If I joined, I would only be forced to answer hard questions while threatening to get in the way instead of recovering from my three day impromptu fast.

I stuffed another chicken sandwich into my mouth, and headed towards the forest.

* * *

"Grey, I'm sorry for this, but you're way, way, _way_ more skilled than I am and I need you to be very stealthy. If anything gets out of hand for what happens here," I tapped my mini sketches of what roughly happens on the few sheets of paper that Grey had brought with him, "disengage and call me. If you can't call, shoot all your bullets into the air and then immediately escape the area. These bullets are special bullets. Remember, _immediately_. I can't stress this enough. Don't attempt to solve this by yourself."

"I understand, Miss," Grey murmured as he studied the rough sketches and paragraphs I had written that told of what would happen in the fight.

"Good. Go now, and follow Tsuna and the others. Don't mind it if Yamamoto, Hibari and Reborn notice you. They won't try and attack you, but try not to get detected."

Yamamoto was nice – he wouldn't think much of my 'grandpa' following them. Reborn would treat it with suspicion, but wouldn't want to destroy Tsuna's psyche before his fight with Enma, while Hibari's pride would prevent him from accosting my subordinate instead of me _directly_.

And so it was safe.

Grey nodded and vanished. I leaned against the helicopter that Grey and Yamamoto had used to get to the island in the first place (hidden quite well, and with food supplies in it!) and waited.

In my estimate… If Grey came back after noon it meant the fight was over, and we could leave.

I settled down and waited.

At noon, Grey came back. I stood up, trying to not scratch one of the mosquito bites I had acquired.

"So it went well?" I said, absently scratching a particularly irritating one on my leg.

"It all went well until the end, Miss. In your sketch, you indicated they were all freed at the end of the fight?" Grey's finger pointed at my chicken-scratch Italian in the margin of the page.

"Yeah, they were just kind of… magically freed from Vindice."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "Because Vindice were feeling kind? I don't know?"

Here, Grey frowned.

"Miss, they won the battle as you predicted. But at the end, Vindice freed all the people but attempted to recapture Rokudo Mukuro into their prison. When Tsuna and the Vongola protested, Vindice demanded a reason for them to free him and gave them an hour.

"How much time left?" I asked, already heading into the direction of the fight.

"Forty-five minutes."

"Good. Lead me there, Grey."

"Yes, Miss."

We ran.

* * *

"Alice! How was your fight with Wend? Where were you?" Tsuna asked, his eyes wide as he looked up from Ryohei's side. Ryohei looked up, and gave a tired grin.

"Yo, Bright! You're looking very extreme today!"

"Hey, Tsuna, Ryohei." I looked around, and Chrome was there hovering over Mukuro, who looked up when he felt my gaze on him. I nodded at him, and his face momentarily creased in confusion before…

"Tsuna," I said while looking past him, "where are the Vindice?"

"There, Alice, but I don't know why you want to know… The Vindice want to take back Mukuro's body now that the fight is over. I don't know what to do-"

He stopped talking with a pat on the head.

I sighed in my head ruefully. Tsuna really was the same height as me now. Or was he taller?

"Leave it to me, Tsuna. Don't worry about a thing."

Smiling at him and following the direction of his finger, I passed by Yamamoto and Reborn and Gokudera, lying on the floor, as they all looked at me in confusion (why didn't I join the fight? Why was I here _now?)_

Enma and his family was on the far side of the bare rocks that resulted from the fight, all crying or glancing at Tsuna's side of the rock or resting from their injuries.

I left them to it. They had found out the truth; they didn't need anything else.

Walking a bit more… There.

Making sure no-one could hear me, I called out. "Jager."

The cloaked Vindice smoothly turned around, looking down at me and Grey, before bowing slightly in recognition.

"Little Brighteye. You know of our names and curse?"

"Yes. I'm here to plead for Rokudo Mukuro's body from your prison."

"Why?"

"I wish to speak to Bermuda."

Bermuda was the next 'big bad' in the series, before the series ended. The Arcobaleno were given a dream of the person who had given them the 'baby curse' in the first place – Checker Face. He tempted them with a representative battle, for the Arcobaleno to choose a group of Representatives to battle for them. Whoever won would have their curse lifted. They were given watches as tokens of participants, and then fought at random times.

Then Bermuda came in as the Eighth Arcobaleno, stealing a set of watches, and revealing that the Representative Battle was just a ruse, that the curse could not _really_ be broken. Whoever won the Representative battle would just become the new Arcobaleno while the old Arcobaleno were killed or died from the curse.

Thus the dubbing of 'the strongest babies'.

Bermuda entered the battle for revenge. He even fuelled a whole new type of Flame from his hatred for Checker Face. He gathered followers, waited for centuries, just for a chance to kill Checker Face.

Needless to say, he was one determined bloke.

Reborn chose Dino and Tsuna's families. Verde, Mukuro's group. Fon chose Hibari. Skull, Enma's family. Uni, the combined Millefiore and Giglio Nero family. Colonello allied with CEDEF with the promise that he would chose Lal to be freed instead, while Mammon entered with the Varia.

I had the perfect reason for Vindice to let Mukuro go.

"That isn't so easy, little Brighteye," Jager said, surprisingly kindly, "but it can be done."

I was immediately suspicious. Sadly enough, kindness in Mafia was just plain scary.

"Why are you being so accommodating?"

"Because your family and ours have a little understanding. Bermuda is only behind the rocks. Your companion will have to stay here."

So I followed Jager with Grey staying back, as instructed, and rounded a stack of rocks away from all the curious eyes to meet with Bermuda. He was the baby with the clear pacifier, and I looked at him with intense curiosity. I wonder why he was bandaged like everyone else. He wasn't a zombie like the others, right?

"Bermuda, don't recapture Mukuro," I said instead. Straight-forward. To the point.

Spartan Teacher Two would be crying from my lack of bargaining skills.

The baby was sitting on a patch of spared grass, the grass tickling his stomach by how _small_ he was. He didn't look threatening. But hey, appearances were deceiving. Bermuda raised his little head, and Jager put him on his shoulder in reply.

"Why?" he replied, similar curiosity in his tone. "No matter the understanding between our groups, a criminal is a criminal. We stated that we needed a sound reason before giving up Rokudo Mukuro."

I frowned.

"You know Checker Face is coming soon, right?"

And Bermuda _tensed_. It was actually quite funny how he went from casual-friendly to threatening.

"What do you know?"

"Not much," I lied. "But I do know that Rokudo Mukuro will be taking part as an Arcobaleno representative in the upcoming battle as a boss." I smiled up at the baby perched on Jager's black-cloaked shoulder. "I think that's reason enough for you."

Although I couldn't see Bermuda, I could feel his eyes on me underneath his top-hat.

"You speak in truth for the latter part of your speech. That is indeed a good enough reason for letting Rokudo Mukuro goes from our prison, even if it is for our personal gain. You know more about Checker Face though, don't you?"

"Maybe. But you know Brighteye laws right? Even though I didn't know there was an agreement between Vindice and Brighteye until like, two minutes ago, you'd understand if I said 'I don't want to mess anything up?'"

Bermuda was silent before stating, "Naïve."

Huh?

"You know of the existences of Parallel worlds, and the people who have the power to look into them. Checker Face is more powerful than all of us – who can say he does not see your attempts at withholding information, and therefore, make us lose this battle?" Jager straightened up, and Bermuda glared down at me.

"I will not tolerate anyone who stands in my way from defeating Checker Face."

Woah. Woahwoahwoah. Back up a bit, Bermuda.

"No, it's nothing like that." I grimaced. "Actually, I encourage you doing whatever you want right now. You're interested in Reborn, aren't you?"

Bermuda only had an adverse reaction.

"So your story is that detailed in my motives. I must be a central character, or an important side character. Which means you have the ending. Tell me."

…I was getting the biggest sense of déjà vu.

_Tell me. Tell me. Tell me! What's with all these demanding people?_

"Nope. Not done. I have a question, and I might answer a question of yours if you answer mine."

Of _course_ Bermuda was interested.

"What is it?"

"Do you know where the original trinisette came from?"

"This is only a rumour, but I heard that someone, somewhere, called Earth the 'miracle planet'," Bermuda replied. "But Earth's balance was hard to maintain, and so someone wished upon a star and from that, a large power was born."

I raised an eyebrow, dissatisfied with the answer.

"Wished upon a _star_?"

Bermuda scowled at me. I could feel it, even through the bandages.

"It is just a rumour that I heard throughout the centuries I have lived. Now tell me about Checker Face."

I smirked.

"It's just a rumour… but apparently he's not human. And unlike you, he's never been human before. Don't underestimate him."

With that warning, I grinned.

"Now, bye! I've got what I wanted now!"

I merrily went away, hoping against hope that Bermuda didn't order Jager to use the Eighth Flame and teleport to… capture me or something. I've had enough of getting captured. They always target the females! I swear!

Going back to where Grey had been waiting, Tsuna and the others were already standing with him ready to leave, and Enma had joined them. Ignoring the two bosses, I went to stand in front of Mukuro instead, giving a particularly malicious smirk.

"You're free. You owe me big now, Mukuro."

He cursed.

"Taking care of people's vulnerability, Alice?" he snapped back.

"Business is business. I'll call upon the favour when I need it, hm?" I taunted. "That is, if you can get up. That Spade guy messed you up _good_."

"I'm fine," Mukuro smirked.

Giving him a very, very doubtful look, I started to walk away before Chrome launched herself at me.

"Alice… Thank you."

I paused, before smiling softly and patting her hand.

"It's fine, Chrome. Spend some more time with _darling_ Mukuro, okay?" I said, drawling the _darling_ just for Mukuro. I heard a grunt of annoyance and hid a snicker.

Job done.

Chrome let go, and I headed off towards Tsuna.

"Alice!" he smiled, as he walked towards me. "What… what did you do? Vindice just appeared and told us Mukuro was free, and disappeared!"

I smiled. "They said give a reason, right? I gave them a good reason, that's all."

Tsuna grabbed my hand and started dragging me forward towards the group. "Come on, we're all going to go back now. I'm just so happy right now. I mean, Enma and everyone all came out fine, and I was so prepared I was going to have to… _kill_ someone again," Tsuna shuddered. "But it wasn't needed. Thank goodness. It was hard enough trying to get over…"

I paused, stopping.

"Tsuna. Say that again?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm really happy that everyone is—"

"No, after."

"Enma?"

I sighed, and slapped my forehead.

"Tsuna, I didn't realise you were guilty over Byakuran. I mean, didn't know. I'm…"

Sorry for not realising you were human? The books gave such a convincing picture that Tsuna had rebounded straight back into normal clumsy Tsuna-life that I didn't even consider that Tsuna had the depth to realise he had killed Byakuran.

Stupid.

Tsuna's face dawned slowly into understanding.

"Alice, look at me." Tsuna now faced me, brown eyes slanted with gold from the afternoon light. His face was serious and surprisingly tired from all his previous babble.

But of course. He just had a life-threatening fight.

"I had to kill Byakuran. Just like how Yuni had to sacrifice herself. Just like how I didn't have enough power to protect Yuni and stop killing Byakuran at that time, yes? But I've gotten over it. Believe me, Alice, because you and my family are what gives me the strength to go on, alright?"

I merely nodded absently, before starting to usher Tsuna back to the group.

"Tsuna, you're tired. We have to get you back to the ship now and let you and the rest of the group _rest_," I muttered to him, fussing. Tsuna only gave a wry grin back, before letting himself being poked and prodded back towards the group.

"I'm so happy, Alice. I mean it."

Tsuna looked at the family, laughing and smiling and forgiving with the Shimon.

"This time I was strong enough to protect all my friends."

I looked (slightly) up at Tsuna in wonder.

When we got close enough, Gokudera blew up at my treatment of his _oh most precious Juudaime!_

"Freaky eyes! How _dare_ you poke Juudaime that way! He's tired, and he needs support, right, Juudaime?" Gokudera turned his adoring puppy eyes at Tsuna, who started laughing awkwardly and scratching the back of his head.

"Gokudera… I'm fine. Ahaha… _Hiie!"_

Tsuna tripped over a rock, and Gokudera lunged to protect him even as my hand on Tsuna's elbow kept him from falling and instead made him swing forwards and then backwards. Watching Gokudera eat dust for nothing made me smile and Yamamoto, hearing the commotion, looked up at us and laughed, walking over from Kaoru who was weeping many Manly Tears.

"Whatssup? Yo Gokudera, what are you doing?"

He crouched in front of Gokudera's disgruntled face.

"What do you _think_ I'm doing, Baseball Idiot?"

"Falling?" Yamamoto said with a straight face.

Gokudera exploded.

Tsuna sighed.

My smile fell. Past the scene that Gokudera and Yamamoto were making were another set of black eyes underneath a black fedora.

Reborn was looking at me again. Damn it.

I let go of Tsuna's elbow, and he glanced at me startled. I shot him a grimace (that was supposed to be a smile, mind you) and turned to Grey.

"Grey, go back in the helicopter that you used to come here. I'm going with them."

Grey's eyes were concerned.

"Are you sure, Miss? I don't mean to question you but…" he trailed off, looking past me to where Reborn surely was.

"It's okay. I have a plan."

I think.

"If you say so, Miss."

Grey bowed and left, as efficient as always, but not before pressing a chocolate bar into my hands. I looked at it, bemused. I was quite full from that picnic basket. Maybe I should give it to Lambo. He was like bottomless pit for anything sweet.

I smiled at Tsuna and the group, wondering absently how Hibari was going to get off the island. Probably call Kusakabe or something, since he obviously wasn't coming back with us. He wasn't anywhere near here, for all I could see.

"Let's go, shall we?"

* * *

"Good job, Tsuna. You must all be tired," Ninth said to us, smiling softly while all the Shimon were welcomed but were treated warily. Enma and the others actually seemed a bit sheepish, awkward, and sticking very, very close to Tsuna. Tsuna seemed as oblivious as always though – which was good, because that was diffusing the tension.

Tsuna hadn't really seen anything that the Mafia had done, after all.

"Yeah. Can you forgive Enma, Grandpa? We learnt the truth on tha-tha-that island…" Tsuna yawned, and the Ninth gave a firm frown to one of his Guardians. One with disarming smile stepped up, and ushered all of us into a room full of bunk beds.

"We'll see, Tsuna," was Ninth's cryptic reply.

Enma had done much more than just insult the Ninth after all. He had insulted the traditions of the Vongola, stolen an heirloom, declared war, killed (probably) many allied and trusted people from famiglias in that exploded hall.

What a mess.

Oh well. It wasn't _my _mess.

"Ninth," I politely cut in as Ninth made to get away with Reborn. "I need to speak with Reborn for a little while. Alone."

"Tsuna's Star Guardian, Alice, was it?" Ninth said, clearly stating how he was addressing me. I wasn't _Brighteye_, I was one of his family, and therefore, underneath his jurisdiction. How bothersome. "Can it not wait?"

"Err… sorry?"

"No, Timoteo, it's fine. Hold the Shimon Famiglia's fate until we land. I have things I want to talk to Alice about as well."

The Ninth looked at Reborn with slight surprise, before nodding.

"Very well. He will lead you to a private room."

A man suddenly materialised before us, giving us very deep bows, as befitting of an Arcobaleno and Brighteye, and led us deep into the ship. We were silent on the way, people trying to get out of the way on the narrow corridors of the ship. The room wasn't very luxurious, but it had a desk, three bookcases, a porthole, and two chairs.

Reborn started checking the room for bugs, but I just shrugged and covered us in a bubble of my Flame.

"My Flame has the property to block all unwanted signals. If they're monitoring us, then they won't see anything. If we talk softly enough, it's fine."

Reborn kept checking. He wasn't the best Hitman for being careless, after all. After awhile, Reborn was satisfied and closed the curtain over the porthole and switched on the light.

"What did you want to tell me, Alice?"

"I think it's obvious, don't you think?"

_I mean, _I added to myself, _it wasn't as if you weren't staring at me creepily for two days straight for nothing_.

Awkward silence.

"Reborn, if I trust you, tell me the secret of the Arcobaleno from your point of view first. Please. A secret for a secret. It's trade. Only that way can I trust you."

"Transaction?" Reborn's eyes were huge in his large, baby face. "Why should I trust anything that comes out of your mouth, Brighteye?"

"Because you forgave me once, and understood that I am part of another family. We all have rules. Vongola and Brighteye are the same. What is so different this time?"

Reborn sat primly, poised and dangerous.

Looks are deceiving indeed.

"You had no loyalties to the Ninth himself," Reborn began. "It was… unrealistic to expect you to care for the Ninth as much as I care for him. Ultimately, Tsuna was still only a candidate for becoming the next Boss, and therefore, as his Guardian, you are not technically part of Vongola. But this time…"

"This time it was Tsuna who was in danger, and Tsuna's Inheritance Ceremony, and Tsuna was sure to inherit the title of Boss after Ninth," I finished for him, starting to understand _why_ Reborn was being so angsty about this.

"Yes. By Mafia law, to know of an attack, to know of the enemy, the place and time of the attack in such detail and being in such close confidence of the Boss, it is near treasonous. If you weren't who you were, I would have shot you at the waterfall."

I nearly gulped. I stopped myself, looking at the hard eyes of Reborn who demanded answers.

_Tsuna looked at his family, smiling. "I'm so happy, Alice. I mean it. This time I was strong enough to protect all my friends."_

That scene shot through my mind, and I looked straight at Reborn.

"You would have ruined him," I said softly. "He would never trust you again, because he wouldn't have understood."

"It would have been easy enough to go on a toilet break when you were off fighting Wend and shooting you, Alice. Give me answers."

I thought for a moment, before looking up.

"No, Reborn. Tell me your secret, and then I will tell you a secret of my own. You have told Yamamoto – you trust him enough, and I know our age and inexperience isn't something that holds you back. Tell me, and you will get what you want."

Reborn's gaze never faltered.

Trying to win a staring contest with him was impossible. The world's greatest Hitman was also the world's greatest Staring Creepily At Peopler. He had those eyes that never blinked. At all.

Gah. So creepy!

"Transaction… I kind of understand why you would want a transaction. In a transaction on your grounds, you would have control and understanding of motives much better than just handing over information."

"Yeah. Just get on with it."

And refuse. Then I could just go back and check on Enma…

Reborn gave a smirk.

"I became Arcobaleno one day when I found a man with a mask over his face in my apartment, tempting me with my pride of being called the Greatest Hitman in the world. I went to the place where he said he would have a job that would challenge me with my new teammates. There were the other Arcobaleno with Lal, sans Colonello. That was where we first met. I did not trust them enough to give my true name, so I gave them my most well known alias – Reborn."

Wait a second. Reborn wasn't his real name? Why did no one know this? Even his file said his real name was Reborn!

"We did a couple of challenging missions together…"

No, that wasn't the matter here. He was actually telling me!

I interrupted.

"Reborn, you're actually telling me?"

Reborn kept his stupid smirk.

"You expected me to refuse? I'm giving you my secret. Aren't you happy?"

No. But he knew that. Darn baby.

"Of course I'm happy. Please continue."

"We did a couple of missions together, never meeting the masked man face to face, but the challenge was refreshing to us, ones who have merely become too strong. We became over-confident; we built a name for ourselves. One day, we got a mission to go to a mountain, I won't specify which one. There, we were all cursed, but Lal was only half-cursed due to Colonello's interference. From then on, we could not grow up, we could not take off the Pacifiers off our necks, and we had to take on practically new identities to survive. Colonello and Lal had to leave their Italian military training base. Lal joined CEDEF. Colonello a guard at Mafia Land. Verde created his own laboratory. Viper became Mammon, who joined the Varia for protection. Skull had to abandon his stuntmanship to become a dog of the Calcassa. Luce disappeared. Fon became nomadic. My alias became my real name and I allied myself with the Ninth in my new vulnerability. I found it ironically fitting, the name. Reborn."

Reborn gave a short mocking laugh. "That was nearly five years ago. I started tutoring Dino six months after my transformation. We all had a period of rehabilitation where we had to come to grips with our situation and how to move and fight. It was generally six months for all of us." His mouth was grim. "It wasn't pretty."

He glossed over that, and just continued. "I made another reputation for myself, but all of us Arcobaleno blame the curse for the loss of what we held the dearest. It was our pride and our skills that lead us together and let us fall to ruin. We will do anything to get rid of it."

That actually… sounded really horrible in a real-world perspective. It was cute and all, with all the babies and all, but now—

"It's your turn now."

Oh yeah.

But he did come clean with me.

And who knew?

I had always thought this arc was a whole lot of pointless pandering around and posturing anyway. If Reborn helped me… maybe I could stop more than half of the battles occurring. I knew how to solve this situation from the start with no casualties and injuries.

Yes… and Reborn was an Arcobaleno.

_But… that would be changing the plot._

Screw the plot. I've broken enough rules anyway. If this becomes successful, it would ensure everything be finished within four weeks of my birthday. My birthday was two weeks later – that meant I only had six weeks. Even in canon it only took around five days before the whole issue was solved.

_It sounds good in theory, but if we follow the plot, we know what will happen. You know Mukuro's warning. Ripples in the pool. It's what Bill did._

I'll clean up the plot. At the end, it's Tsuna being happy with the family, there isn't anything major after this. That's why I can meddle now – there's no known timeline I'm going stuff up after this.

"Reborn," I said finally. In my most serious voice, I bent down to his level, so we could see eye to eye. "Promise me. Tell no-one. We will keep this to ourselves."

"I swear by my loyalty to the laws of mafia. Tell me."

This would need tweaking, but I was good at improvising. I checked my bubble of Flames for any holes, before nodding to myself. Reborn sat there patiently, relaxed now that I was going to tell him some answers at last.

"Brighteyes are chosen by dripping a chemical into the eye of an eight-year old. The ones with eyes that turn bright are selected into the family, with the liabilities of having an extra weak immune system."

"I know that," Reborn said, with a slight crease between his eyebrows. I nodded.

"But that doesn't make sense, does it? If by normal selection, you would leave out the ones with identifiable characteristics and weakened immune systems. This is the secret. When our eyes turn bright, we see a specific future for a specific item or person. We are then taken to the Brighteye mansion immediately to put down everything we remember on paper. They record it down, page by page, night by night, until the visions stop. It depends on how far you see into the future. The longer it is, the longer it takes to see it all."

Reborn swallowed this without much problem. But one would guess being transformed into a baby must change perspectives.

"I see."

"Do not think our information network is not formidable. Ours is still the very best. But we have something extra."

"So the Star Flames are not really hereditary, but just identified by the chemical."

"Yes. We won't tell anyone how many children we watch."

I hope he didn't feel like that was all a lie. It was part truth. It takes time to read a long series of books; Brighteyes are prone to nightmares of memories. But just of another life, in another world…

"I've known who Tsuna will be since I turned eight. I've known who he will meet, who he will fight, known that you would change Tsuna's life. But that's it, Reborn. I know what Tsuna will be. These… visions, they don't include us. That future we see, we don't see ourselves in."

"Then why meddle?" Reborn asked curiously, poised on his chair.

Why indeed?

"A pebble in a pool creates ripples. A butterfly's wing beat may create a tornado across the ocean. One careless action, and many have to try and fix it."

"Someone did something wrong in the past, and the repercussions echoed through time," Reborn translated himself. I nodded.

"The future without me had Tsuna facing all these with his family – _without_ me in it. Do you understand, Reborn? Just be existing near Tsuna, I create ripples. Even now, Tsuna is much more confident than I remember from my records."

"But that is a good thing," Reborn pointed out logically. "Confidence is befitting of a future boss."

"Not all repercussions are as positive as that. Belle was not supposed to be there. Jared was sent by Wend in the Varia fight. We Brighteyes make holes in other people's visions. That's why we guard the future we see for the person our eyes are fixated on. I'm guarding against my own family while still _relying_ on them. Not many would understand. They would think us weak."

"And that is not something the Brighteyes can afford," Reborn murmured.

"Tsuna was just unlucky enough to have my eyes fixated on him when he and I were eight. From then on, I trained to fix the future I saw for Tsuna. Tsuna never even had a real choice in his future - I think if he did go awry, I would have pushed him back."

I felt guilty. But it was needed.

"If we succeed our mission to protect the future… we get a reward. A large one."

I hesitated, not knowing how I should word it to Reborn. Reborn waited.

He seemed good at doing that.

"We… we are allowed to see our family as our real selves if we succeed. As we were taken at eight—"

I let Reborn connect the dots by himself. His eyes lit with understanding, and slight sympathy and pity.

"Ah," he said.

"Enma was supposed to invade Tsuna's Inheritance Ceremony. My duty was just to stop Wend's interference, which I did."

"And nothing more."

I nodded.

"Nothing more."

There was a thoughtful silence after this revelation for Reborn. I thought this was a good time to introduce my idea. "I'm going to stop listening to the rules for what happens next, Reborn. Listen to me."

I was scared. I was really, really scared. But I could save time, and lives. This was real life – how should I know if one of those miscellaneous buildings they demolished in Namimori weren't filled with people? Civilians?

My sweaty palms were wiped against my pants as I clenched my shirt hard.

"I am listening, Alice."

I looked at Reborn.

"The next fight involves the Arcobaleno and Checker Face, Reborn. This is what will happen, and I want you to help me stop most of the fighting. The answer is ridiculously simple, and I only need the people to tell it to. How long will it take to send an encrypted letter to all the Arcobaleno, and them to travel to that spring that reacts to an Arcobaleno's pacifier and reveals hidden text?"

"Four days, Alice. What are you planning?"

Wend's voice echoed in my head.

"_The Brighteye Mantra. Don't get too close."_

I swallowed and closed my eyes.

_I have thought about it, Wend. But it's already too late._

My nerves were shaking. Except I was ready.

_I've been too close ever since I realised they cared for me._

"Not what I'm planning. We're going to plan, Reborn. I'm going to tell you all I know now."

* * *

**And end of chapter!**

**Don't worry, there'll be another chapter next week. I hope this chapter was interesting enough to make up for my absence - I had exams. So one week was dedicated to studying, two weeks of exams, and one week of recuperation. XD**

**Thank you for reading! It's chapter 60 now, and I'm kinda shocked that people have patience to read this far. I mean, to tell the truth, the first few chapters aren't the best chapters of the block after all, haha. Please review, and tell me your opinions! Complain if you want to! **

**I'm actually quite worried - is 60 too long for a fic? I have some ideas I'm really really excited for set _after_ the series. TT_TT Maybe I'll have to start writing very very long chapters. Sigh. (tell me what you think will happen, opinions, questions! I'll try to answer in the story itself, or PM back, or just plain enjoy what you all type for me. Thank you for reading, once again! A story wants to be read, after all. ^^)**


	61. Preparations Complete

_[Alice's Brighteye – Number Fifty – Letter to that troublesome prisoner. You know who]_

_Letter number one  
(I can't believe I just wrote that, because doesn't that mean I'll send even more?)_

_Yo Wend!  
You must have noticed that I didn't bother with a phone call and staying in contact like that. Well, I'm not one to refuse dear Mukuro's advice, so here I am talking to you. He usually gives good advice. It's his motives, however…_

_You wouldn't happen to know how someone who didn't reincarnate as we did to know about the Angels, do you? I still remember him knowing _exactly_ what Bill was doing even before I knew. Yeah, I know I'm dense that way, so shut up._

_Anyway, here I am sending you a letter that I'm going to scan and send over as email for Anise to print for you – how lucky for you! You have no excuse for replying just as fast!_

_Don't mistake this very friendly first letter as understanding though. Wend, you're totally sane. I don't understand you, but I'm trying at least. Maybe you can rant about your lovely prisoner life to me, or about the past. Maybe then I could understand just a little bit… I have talked to Alayne a bit you know. She kept mentioning someone named 'Qin'. I know she was the Anise equivalent in your time. Must have been an awesome person to put up with you all for so long. The first Brighteye family sounds so crazy – and not in a good way either. I probably would have gone insane._

_What else is there to say? I visited Jared today; since today was the day we came back from that private Shimon island. He is still broken. The only way I would know to moderately get a reaction from him is to stare at him for ten minutes straight. And even then he would only get a little annoyed crease in his forehead. I think you have to meet him in person, but any appeals I've made to Anise getting you out is, for the most part, negative. But I can get persistent. A matter of time._

_Now, this letter has gone on enough. I expect a reply before ten pm Jap time, yes? I'll put it in the email to Anise. She'll make sure of it._

_Bye_

_Alice_

* * *

_Alice,  
How nice of you to write.  
There are many people who knew about our existence. Not many survived. He may be one of the survivors, or maybe he was related to a Brighteye, or a person with judgement from another angel, or connected to a group who knew about us. Who knows?  
I don't think anyone could understand me. You're not the first to make the effort.  
Believe me when I say you wouldn't have gone insane. Qin… you could say was a version of you. She was one of the strongest people I knew, and was one of my best friends. She was best friends with all the family members. I guess it is one of my selfish motivations for talking with you. I am writing to a memory. I would not bother, otherwise.  
Jared's case is unfortunate but he will get up soon enough. I know the people I chose. You seem to have a misconception that I like seeing people breaking down. Know that it is the opposite that is true.  
You aren't very good at writing letters, are you?  
Wend_

* * *

Reborn's face was unreadable, and he seemed still on edge as his little hands clenched the little piece of paper that said it all before a little burst of flame from a transformed Leon incinerated in a second, and it reduced into a little dusting of ashes. He didn't take any chances – gathering all the ash he opened the porthole and dumped it outside before closing it again.

His eyes stared at me, but his gaze (I sensed) was focused inward. He was confused, and off-balance. I let him. It wasn't all the time that a person told you, in detail, what would happen if something didn't change. But just from how he was acting I knew it was the right choice.

But what was the right choice in these types of matters? I was still tense myself. I was sure I wasn't the first Brighteye to try this. No, our history was nearly as rich as the Vongolas, and if they had had ten generations of Bosses, we could have had our own fair share of mistakes.

"You… are still lying about something, but it isn't about what you have disclosed to me about the future," Reborn said instead, his voice quiet.

"I am lying. But that is a family secret – I have given more than enough truth in those lies, and in much more depth as well." Reborn tilted his head speculatively at that, but he was still thinking. He wasn't truly there.

And to think just two days ago he was about to murder me in cold blood and I would have had to put in a zombie appearance to Tsuna while Bill sewed back my head on my neck, or given me a new heart or something. I was just glad I was important enough to merit this chance.

"Alice, do you truly agree with our plan? There still involves some fighting," Reborn said, before his lips bloomed into a smirk. "I never knew you were such a pacifist."

I shrugged. "Fighting begets more fighting, and the cycle never ends unless sufficient strength is shown, or an agreement between the parties are reached. And that sometimes needs… intervention. I have the tools that I haven't shown or used before."

I let my blank mask fall away for a second, to show Reborn my true feelings before donning it again. "This is as scary for me as it could be to you," I continued.

(It was a truly sad state of affairs when I felt uncomfortable showing my feelings – but it was necessary. Emotions weren't a weakness – showing it was).

He looked intrigued, taking off his hat to give Leon a place to sleep, upturning it onto the table and watching the little shape-shifting chameleon crawl into it.

"One would think knowledge of the future would be much more enjoyable than what you portray," Reborn stated.

My fingers were tapping the desk silently, undulating up and down in sequence like waves as I stared sightlessly past Reborn's hair and at the dark sky.

"It's easier just to not think about it when you talk to people. Just forget and enjoy the moment. Appreciate that you don't know everything. Just because you know the cause and the effect before it happens doesn't make it so that I _know_ the people I'm talking to. I had to learn that, more slowly that I would have liked, but I did learn that and now I want…"

"Change," Reborn finished for me.

I gave no answer back.

Reborn gave a little hum.

"But it is understandable. You were a child. You still are."

To that I could only give a bitter cough of a laugh.

"Am I?"

Reborn's eyes were dark and piercing, but blind. He saw what people couldn't see, but then missed so many obvious things. I was the same – so I could relate on a level.

But enough of this talk. Reborn was only getting a character profile of me right now, as he needed to know my motivations. To know the cause was to know the directions of the effect, after all.

"Reborn, so the fighting… I will try and follow the plan as closely as I can. These things go outside of my control far too often for my taste," I said blandly.

The plan revolved around the points Tsuna showed his personal strength, as Reborn insisted. His side as a tutor stopped him from anything else.

I think it was just Reborn having to see for himself Tsuna summoning all his enemies and bending them to his plan and authority. He was less that pleased at the ending I gave to him though.

"Tsuna listened to me when I apparently said he hadn't changed?" Reborn asked with a puzzled frown on his face.

"That was what my memories suggest, yes."

Reborn wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Then he has failed spectacularly. I asked that of Dino as the last thing before I left, saying he hadn't changed at all, and he better just make another family and be done with the Cavallone family. He proved me wrong, insisting he was his Family's Boss and that he had grown stronger. If I wasn't happy with his strength he would train until I was happy with him."

He gave a chuckle. "You wouldn't believe the pained face Dino gave when he said he would train more with me."

I imagined and could even manage a smile before shifting a bit closer to Reborn, thoughtful.

"Yes, Tsuna failed then. He accepted your title of Neo-Vongola Primo and just went back to his school life."

"I would have only asked that question if I was sure of his growth. By what you say happened before," he waved the piece of paper, "he showed power and authority and got respect. Why would he accept that?"

"I think…" I paused, and Reborn was attentive so I ploughed on. "I think Tsuna hadn't truly forged bonds with the Mafia yet. Yes, most of his friends are Mafia, but they don't truly show him the deference that a Boss is shown if not close Family. He doesn't understand that thousands of people depend on the Vongola Family's dealings to put food on the table. He doesn't know the insult it would be to just call himself Neo-Vongola-Primo, throwing away Vongola tradition like that. A title like 'Neo' can only come from other people, not self-titles."

"You're correct," Reborn said. "That was probably the other test, if I understand myself correctly. If Tsuna does fail like that, I would like to change our plan a little more so that he understands his burden."

I frowned.

"I am merely trying to decrease the fighting. Tsuna has strength already—"

"Strength and authority are nothing without understanding his responsibility. Tsuna right now is the kind Prince grown up in a gold palace. He sees gold so much he doesn't know the value could save all the poverty in his kingdom. If he knew, he would give it away in a heartbeat, but then where would he live?"

My silence seemed to spur him on, as Reborn leaned forward, twirling the pencil between his fingers, "Tsuna has to understand all this. He needs to keep his living place and his superiority while still having a healthy kingdom. By what you write, his potential is showing. Now he just needs to understand."

"You want to push Tsuna into Boss by giving him friends."

It would be effective. Tsuna would accept his position as Mafia boss.

And I would be the last to say Tsuna would be a bad Boss. I would follow no-one else.

(funny, because Mafia would kill for such bonds of loyalty and Tsuna had done nothing but smile and accept us)

Reborn merely smiled, and Leon on his hand transformed into a lighter. He looked at the words and diagrams on it, clenching it tightly as he sank into his thoughts. A burst of flame, and the piece of paper was gone.

Now, we looked at each other, us understanding the other more than before. He moved first, in the silence, as he reached for his hat and put it on without jostling Leon too badly. I myself retracted the Flames into a glowing sphere in my hand, the humming warmth comforting.

Suddenly, he was Reborn the Strongest Hitman in the world, and I was an Elite member of the Brighteyes, Family to Tsuna.

I stood up, and Reborn jumped on my shoulder.

A sign of acceptance.

I walked a bit smoother as I walked out the door and delivered him at Timoteo's door as per a Vongola henchman's instructions to the Boss's rooms. As the Ninth opened the door, he hopped from my shoulder to the floor, and walked in. I gave a short bow to the Ninth before leaving without dismissal.

Pretty sure I offended someone back there, but hey. He wasn't _my_ Boss.

Walking to the rooms where Shimon and Vongola Tenth's family were, I was surprised to see the mattresses dragged down to the floor and Tsuna, Gokudera, Yamamoto and Lambo were all sleeping in a pile of blankets and pillows. They must have asked for more, I reflected, as I scanned around to see Ryohei dangling half from a bottom bunk and half on the floor as if he couldn't decide to sleep with the others or not.

…Ryohei's foot was perilously near Gokudera's mouth.

Oh well, I shrugged as I picked my way delicately over. When I reached there however, I was surprised to see Chrome sleeping with their dogpile, near the edge but still there.

I was even surprised out of my annoyance at how they didn't leave even _one_ mattress on the bunks at the very obvious space they had left me to sleep next to them, with a neatly folded blanket (that wasn't so neatly folded now, since Tsuna's arm had nudged it away). So I settled between Yamamoto and Tsuna (inwardly glad – Gokudera seemed like a very violent sleeper while Yamamoto slept like a log), flapping the blanket and trying to adjust so I didn't wake up anyone while not getting jabbed by any pointy elbows.

It wasn't the most comfortable. My hotel bed was a hundred times better than this, but hey.

I smiled and closed my eyes, relaxing from the Yamamoto and Tsuna's warmth and hearing the rhythmic breathing all of them produced.

For the first time, I felt truly one hundred percent confident of my decision.

I yawned.

Suddenly, I was so sleepy…

* * *

"Alice, come on!" Kyoko smiled at me while dragging me forward. I scowled at how I had to start jogging to catch up (it was too early in the morning to be doing any running at all, damn it) and paused to greet Hana before heading straight towards the arts room. Hana followed us in.

I paused.

"What am I doing here?" I deadpanned, complaining for the sake of it. "I didn't come early to school just to get dragged around…" My eyes widened at how they had decorated the room. "Wait a second, what are you planning, Kyoko?"

Hana smirked. "Kyoko being her nice, air-headed self as always, of course." Just as I was raising my eyebrow, Kyoko went towards the middle of the room where there were still some unused decorations left.

"I calculated see," Kyoko said while continuing to string some streamers around the small stage. "Even though it isn't Tsuna-kun's or Reborn-kun's official birthday yet, their birthdays had already passed when we were fighting in the future, so I thought why not celebrate?"

Hmm. I was still in the doorway, and Hana shoved me inside to fully appreciate her efforts. It was very colourful, and there was a mini stage on the side which had probably inspired Kyoko to do this anyway. This art room had been unused since the beginning of the year anyway.

"Kyoko had been worried about you all," Hana muttered in my ear, "especially after Yamamoto's incident. I don't know how he got better so fast but whatever issues that you lot have been facing Kyoko knows. She was at Yamamoto's side when you all weren't there, you know."

Really? Now I felt guilty for not thinking of her for such a long time.

"Err, we're fine now if you want to know," I called out over to Kyoko. "It's been solved for now."

Kyoko turned to beam sunnily at me, holding up a pack of streamers towards me.

"That's nice, but I didn't drag you here to watch you know!" She exclaimed, and it was with extreme reluctance and a lot of prodding and laughter that I started decorating the room as well.

Well, I could at least tell myself I did a good job.

* * *

I was blatantly sleeping in class, copying Yamamoto's pose (it was surprisingly comfortable, my cheek on the table and my arm hanging off the side) to purposely annoy the teacher when Reborn jumped onto my head from some random secret hidey hole. Everyone stared at him before the teacher exclaimed "Mister Boreen!"

While the class sported funny, pained faces (Boreen? That wasn't it – it was that dangerous teacher they had at parent-teacher, wasn't it?) Reborn addressed the teacher by name.

"Mitsuda, I need to drag out Yamamoto Takeshi and Bright Alice for a little while. May I?"

The teacher looked at Reborn with such idolising eyes I was surprised the chalk in his hand didn't fall from his shaky hands. Actually, seeing my teacher with cow eyes was an experience I wasn't keen to do again.

"Of course!"

And so Reborn dragged Yamamoto and me out of the classroom.

"Eh, Reborn?" Yamamoto sleepily mumbled, rolling his head to try and crack out the cricks, "Why aren't we in English?"

"We were in English two periods ago, Yamamoto," I said in slight amusement.

"Oh, haha, of course! So Reborn, why did you take us out from Maths?" Yamamoto said carefreely, slinging an arm around my shoulders (which I scowled at and tried to shrug out of) and scratched the back of his head.

"To take you to my secret hiding place for some coffee."

Yamamoto blinked. I raised an eyebrow sceptically.

"Oh, is that so?" he replied blankly. "But I don't drink coffee. Do you have any milk instead?"

Urgh, milk.

Yamamoto looked at me in slight amusement, bumping my arm into his. "Oi, Alice, milk is good for you! It'll make you grow taller!"

I snorted.

"That's what you think, you baseball idiot."

"But that's Gokudera's name for me!" He said with wide-eyed innocence. I just groaned and shook my head. Reborn let us to our antics for a second before opening a cleaning closet. I looked at the brooms and disgusting looking buckets in utter boredom while Reborn pressed a button on the wall. Then the whole cupboard shifted upwards with one smooth motion, and we were looking at a beautifully furnished room… for midgets. It was unexpectedly wide though.

"Come in and sit," Reborn said squeakily (sometimes it was hard to take him seriously with that voice) and we crawled to join Leon at the small table. I wasn't too bad off, since if I didn't sit on the chair I could sit normally, crosslegged. Poor Yamamoto had to slouch and tilt his head.

"You still want more milk?" I teased, and he gave a helpless shrug. At least the carpet was nice and fluffy.

Reborn saw us settled in and hopped in himself, pressing another button to let us see the cupboard sliding back down, and then closing another door to block out the view of the cupboard.

The moment the second door clicked shut, air-conditioning kicked in.

"Nice," I muttered, wondering how he got air-conditioners that small and wired to the school system.

Reborn ignored me, handing me a cup of tea and Yamamoto a cup of milk before sitting down in a very comfy looking miniature leather chair.

"Both of you know about the Arcobaleno curse, and know who I was before." Yamamoto glanced at me in surprise.

"You know, Alice?"

I nodded.

"For a long while. Continue Reborn."

Reborn took an annoyed slurp of his coffee before continuing.

"_As I was saying_," Yamamoto gave a sheepish laugh, "Alice has information that suggests that I and the others can be freed from it, but our plan has a few difficulties. That's why we want you to help us."

Yamamoto's first reaction was pure joy. "You can all be freed? That's amazing, Reborn!" He gave a happy twitch, accidentally bumping his head on the ceiling. "You all deserve it, after suffering for so long."

Reborn gave a small smile at that, unexpected fondness in his eyes. He had that look for Tsuna as well, but I was surprised anyway. Yamamoto?

Well, but he _did_ tell Yamamoto his curse…

While I was musing, Yamamoto then gave a thoughtful frown.

"But why not Gokudera, or Ryohei? Gokudera is smarter than I am, and Ryohei has healing powers. He would be better backup than _me_," he said earnestly. "Maybe we can take them all on board? Oh! What about Tsuna? You can't not tell him right? Being well, Mafia and all."

I quickly shook my head.

"Ryohei gets nervous outside the actual fight easily, and Gokudera would definitely want to tell Tsuna so they're both out. Tsuna we're trying to avoid telling because we want him to grow that last stretch to become boss."

Yamamoto looked disheartened as he drooped.

"We won't tell you the whole plan anyway," I offered. "Because Reborn is technically under the Ninth, and I'm technically underneath the jurisdiction of my own Family, we have the right to not tell Tsuna about our plan. You can't though, so we're just telling you in advance so you can help us in a tight spot, so that if I or Reborn tell you something you do it immediately without questions."

He looked thoughtful before nodding and drinking another gulp of milk. "Okay, I get it. But hey, _technically?_" He gave a happy smile. "You both like Tsuna a lot!"

Over Yamamoto's laughter, I just sipped my tea and looked at Reborn.

A hurdle jumped. Next.

* * *

"Kyoko-chan…" Tsuna looked at the room with a very cute blush on his cheeks. "Did you do this all for me?"

Kyoko gave a small giggle. "I didn't all the work. Hana, Haru and Alice helped me as well."

Tsuna glanced at the both of us with a wide smile on his face. I elbowed him.

"I didn't do much. Kyoko did most of the work, and planning, and noticed that your birthday passed in the first place. Thank _her_."

So I shoved him over to stand in front of Kyoko, as he slowly turned tomato red and started stuttering a thank you. Gokudera was in the corner sulking (why didn't I realise that too?) and Yamamoto had an arm slung over his shoulder, laughing at… something.

Reborn was already gorging himself in Bianchi's arms, and Haru was beaming.

"Haru cooked the food! Enjoy!"

I wandered over to the food table to stand next to Haru, grabbing five chicken skewers on the way and a roll of sushi. Tsuna and Kyoko's interaction was too awkwardly adorable for me to comfortably look at and not be embarrassed _for_ them.

"Good job, Haru," I said through a mouthful of food. "It's tasty."

Demolishing my second skewer, she grinned at me. "Thank you! It took me two days, but it was worth it!"

Two _days? _

Chewing through a third skewer, I dragged Tsuna (who had stopped making a fool of himself and wondered to the lovely food himself) to Haru.

"She spent two days on this food," I mumbled through the chicken, barely intelligible.

"Two _days?"_ He exclaimed in surprise. I nodded. My thoughts exactly.

As Tsuna turned towards Haru to blurt out some thanks, I got tackled by two energetic balls of energy.

Swallowing, I sighed.

"Lambo, I-pin, why don't eat some food?"

I-pin smiled sheepishly at me.

Lambo however, clung to my leg and started scuttling up it. I saved him the work by holding sticking a third skewer in my mouth, holding the last two by my left with my plat of sushi, and hauling Lambo up where he could hang more comfortably off my neck.

The brat looped his arms around my neck, swung himself to sit on my shoulders

"Gahaha!" Lambo laughed, "Lambo-sama is the tallest out of all of you!"

I sincerely doubted that. I wasn't _short _(and I will deny that for a long long time), but Yamamoto was definitely a better choice for people-climbing. Plus, he had more patience.

Lambo sat docilely for half a second and proceeded to try steal my chicken.

What! _My_ chicken!

I jerked my head away and proceeded giving my death stare at Lambo, who, _undaunted_, successfully pulled chicken off the other end of the skewer.

"Alice-nee always says to _share_," Lambo merely says snottily. "Right, I-pin?"

I-pin had climbed onto the table, and I sighed and merely invited her into my right arm (she looked so left out with Lambo guffawing at her side) and I shoved Lambo to my left shoulder and placed I-pin on my right.

Ooph. They were freaking heavy.

"Lambo, no!" I-pin's voice yelled in my right ear. "_My_ Gyoza!"

"Muahahaha!" Lambo yelled in my left ear. "It's tasty!"

They tried to grapple over my head.

"Kids?" I tried as I slowly reached for some Gyoza myself while munching a sushi before nearly overbalancing as Lambo tried to launch himself at I-pin but smacking my face with his hand instead. "Lambo? I-pin?" I tried again. (I-pin then scolded him in rapid Chinese, and stood up herself. I admire their balancing abilities, but dude, these were my shoulders and their feet were pointy).

They continued arguing.

I sighed.

Putting down my plates (there was no point in getting angry), and grabbed them both.

"I don't mind you two arguing and all, but fight not on my shoulders, okay?"

I felt them nod, and I just continued munching. Lambo proceeded laughing in my ear. I heard I-pin sigh and echoed the sentiment.

Across the room, Gokudera had calmed down and was smirking at me.

I gave a deadpan scowl back.

Yamamoto gave me a sparkly grin.

B-day boy one was still in Bianchi's arms eating. B-day boy two was trying to escape Shamal's inebriated attempts at telling him how to seduce women.

Kyoko was looking so happy while talking to Ryohei, while standing next to Hana who watched the room amusedly to the side, her face strangely bitter in all the excitement. But that was Hana, so I looked around the room. Haru was clinging onto Tsuna was was being regaled with Shamal's failed flirting attempts. Gokudera had finally rejoined society, and then Enma's group trooped in and well…

The rest of the afternoon was chaos.

Nostalgic, much?

* * *

The next day introduced a transfer student.

While Tsuna was dazing around, Chrome slowly walked in front of the class. Kyoko was visibly surprised, shooting up from her seat.

"Ah!"

"What's the matter, Kyoko?"Tsuna asked. He got ignored (sadly enough).

"I'm so happy!" She exclaimed, staring at the front of the class. Tsuna got the hint, and got a shock of his own. Chrome stood there amongst all those whispers from the more idiotic boys in the class (if any one of them tried to land a hand on Chrome, I'll sic my own fanboys on them) clutching her bag and looking with wide watery eyes at the class. "Chrome-chan!" Kyoko said with her signature warm smile, giving a happy hum.

"What?" Tsuna nearly tipped off his chair (for the seventy-second time this month alone) in shock. "_Chrome?" _

Yamamoto's eyes cracked open at the exclamation, even while Gokudera (at the front of the class) finally paid attention. Enma stopped eating and I sighed (all the top mafia in the class were such bad _students)._

Chrome's eyes watered and she dashed forward to hug Kyoko, clutching her jumper while trying not to cry on her first day. Kyoko softened, and she drew backwards even while hugging Chrome back to see her face.

"What's wrong?" Kyoko asked softly. Chrome just shook her head in silence, before the teacher called for attention in the class.

Chrome let go after awhile (the teacher had let her be) and sat at the empty seat at the corner of the classroom next to Yamamoto. I was glad – at least she was near a friend.

(Jun had moved, and Yamamoto had took her place at the back, see? So I was in the corner, then Yamamoto, then now Chrome. Kyoko and Tsuna sat together, cutely enough, but Gokudera insisted he sit at the front. Strange guy).

Beside Kyoko, Hana had a strange look on her face.

* * *

Jealousy it seemed, got to the best of people.

Hana was one of the most understanding people I have had the pleasure of meeting (except for Miwa… but now I hadn't talked to her for so long that I didn't know where to even start with _that_ tangent). Hana didn't ask a question when she sensed it was awkward. She was logical and pragmatic, with a good work ethic. She was a bit of an unexpected romanticist, but still very understanding as she hadn't even tried to push Kyoko (or I) for information about Tsuna yet.

Or, you could see she was trying not to.

It wasn't really that hard to make the connection.

One day, Tsuna was Dame-Tsuna. He was The Loser. He had no friends, only bullies and neutrals. He got a thirteen point average in all his classes which was dropping. It was painfully obvious to everyone that he liked Kyoko, and that the orange-haired girl was also painfully oblivious.

Then one day he came back strip-naked (except for love-heart boxers), confessed to Kyoko in his boxers, then tore all the hair of Mochida in an uncharacteristic act of vengeance.

No-one bullied Tsuna too much after that. Laughed, maybe, in the safety of the classroom. But outright bullying?

The next day, a transfer student from Italy who was smart, good-looking, and a total delinquent – a student who would only bully Tsuna – did the expected thing and bullied Tsuna. Seemingly with a personal vendetta (which rouses the question what did _Dame_-Tsuna ever do to him? Trip on him?).

The next day after _that_, Yamamoto tries to suicide, Tsuna saves him, and after a few minutes behind the rather shady toilet buildings doing questionable things he has the delinquent as his personal slave almost _and _ Yamamoto and I, two of _the_ popular people of the grade as his friends.

Out of nowhere, Tsuna went from being The-Guy-That-Was-Looked-Down-Upon to Woah-Has-He-Got-The-Friends. And these friends, for some reason, stuck to him. And somehow, he got to talk to Kyoko. And after a few breaks with Ryohei, Kyoko's brother, all of Tsuna's new friends and Tsuna go missing.

After that, Kyoko was Tsuna's friend. Haru, strange girl, was in the circle as well. Me too, actually.

And in all this, where was Hana?

That one best friend who was stuck at the edge of the group just because somehow, she had missed that shot to knowing that one bit about Tsuna that made him so interesting, have such loyalty. She didn't get it. She just wasn't there. Heck, she even knew she wasn't in most people's thoughts mostly.

Kyoko had her. She had Kyoko. It was fine. They were best friends, _forever_, and they just simply didn't hide anything from each other. Kyoko knew about Hana's collection of basketball cards and world stamps, and Hana knew about that incident when Kyoko was eight and Ryohei was a stupid blustering protective idiot.

But now, suddenly she was at the side. Kyoko still talked to Hana, but she was hiding something.

Hana had _noticed_, the difference between how Kyoko talked to her, and how she talked to Haru, to me, to Chrome, to Tsuna, even to _Ryohei._

She hated it.

It was subtle, but there, and I only caught it when Kyoko had hugged Chrome. When Kyoko went to Chrome immediately after class, gathering me as well, while watching us usher Chrome outside into the courtyard. In the field, I looked up, and saw Hana staring down with pain.

With jealousy.

Kyoko didn't even notice, because Chrome was crying again, and even though I was hugging her, Kyoko wasn't in tune with Hana staring at her anymore. Instead, she had brought a handkerchief out to let Chrome blow her nose.

Hana saw that I was watching her, and guilt flashed across her face before she retreated back into the classroom.

I narrowed my eyes.

What an unexpected factor.

* * *

"So Chrome is going to stay at my place?" I asked, asking for confirmation, after Chrome's welcoming party. We had re-used the room that we used for Tsuna and Reborn's birthday.

Tsuna nodded, before giving me a timid smile.

"Can you do it, Alice? I don't really want to burden you but–"

I smirked, before reaching up and ruffling Tsuna's hair a bit.

"You've seen my apartment. It big and empty, so it's no problem at all. I've got enough funds _and_ space to give Chrome the high life you're demanding for her," I said with a slight laugh in my voice.

Tsuna chuckled with me a bit, before his eyes widened in what, shock? I froze, suddenly defensive, wondering what was wrong with the classroom hallway that we were in. No, there weren't many people in the hallway, and those were mainly students rushing to go home. Classes ended early today. I slowly relaxed, sticking my hands back into my pockets where I had easy access to my weapons. Just in case.

"What?" I asked defensively.

"Alice, I just realised how much you've changed!"

I puzzled in my head.

Changed? But I can't change.

Tsuna gave a wide grin, his fluffy brown hair swaying as excitedly as he seemed to be as he started waving his arms around – awkwardly. So Tsuna.

I couldn't help the next smile that came onto my face.

"See?" Tsuna said triumphantly. "You're smiling. A lot now! I remember when I first met you, I couldn't even remember a smile until…" He frowned. "Until, err, let me remember. I didn't see you smile in primary, or in the first year. I guess it was right after Mukuro, then? But that was barely a smile."

He smiled warmly at me. "You must be happier with us then, if you're smiling so much now?"

The smile turned into a more confused one now, but I guess it was still a smile because I shrugged.

"I don't feel much different. I didn't know I could even change really," I added a bit darkly at the end, staring at my hands. "Mafia can't change who they are. You can't change blood-ties."

Tsuna's little bump to my shoulder pulled me out of me thoughts, as he smiled at me.

"Don't brood," he advised, "I realised there was no point in brooding when I could still be clumsy and make people laugh. It's a good thing if you're happy, Alice. You deserve to be happy!"

I finally settled the smile on my face. "What's with the cheesy lines today, Tsuna?"

He only gave me a tiny laugh. "I like it better when you smile," he teased. We started walking down the corridor, sharing light banter.

These were the things that made me worried, but confident at the same time. It was as if by me being _here_, Tsuna had become much more confident in things he shouldn't be confident in. Like, for example, if it were canon, he would be a nervous wreck just by talking to me. But he wasn't.

In contrast though, he was still a hopeless case in the issues of Mafia. He still refused the Boss spot so strongly…

"Tsuna, why don't you want to be our Boss? Don't you like us as your Family?" I asked, curious.

Tsuna took a second to digest that (which was typical Tsuna, of course) before spluttering.

"N-no! I really like you all, believe me, Alice! I mean, you're all the best friends that I could ever hope for!"

_Or the only ones that he has ever made,_ I thought.

Tsuna looked at me, strangely pensive, before nodding to himself. "I'll tell you, Alice, because I think you won't tell Reborn. Hmm, how can I say it?" He tapped his chin. "The only things I've ever seen in the Mafia is fighting and revenge and power." He shrugged. "I don't know why anyone would want to inherit something like that. It's either I take over and rehaul absolutely _everything_, or I just refuse."

He shrugged.

"And I got the feeling Vongola likes its traditions a lot, I got that much from Reborn. I just want to get married, have a normal job, have a kid, and then die at a happy old age with no regrets. Is that too much to ask for?"

"Yes," I said without looking at him.

Tsuna didn't seem to get offended, or even _puzzled_.

How much had slipped by me, when I was focusing on myself in the future, or in the Shimon arc?

_(And didn't Tsuna say he got a note from his future self? He never got that in canon…)_

"I like how you're honest, Alice. I can trust at least, that you aren't afraid to hurt me."

I faced him with an inscrutable look.

"Tsuna, I'm not the person—" _you think I am_ went unsaid when a voice interrupted me,

"Let me know, Kyoko. I'm your best friend, aren't I?"

Hana.

"Hana, it's not my story to tell," Kyoko's voice was obviously pleading and placating all at once. Tsuna and I froze in the doorway, as we had been walking past the cleaning cupboard, and the small room next to it for supplies. The supply door was open just a crack, and we were afforded prime seating for this clash.

Tsuna and I glanced at each other, Tsuna visibly panicking and getting paler.

"Hiie," he said in an exaggerated whisper, "they're fighting! What do we do, Alice?"

And this was the behaviour that I usually expected from Tsuna. Tsuna puzzled me. One minute, we were walking alone and he a confident young man with convictions. Then suddenly, he was faced with a small conflict, and he was an unconfident mess on the floor.

What?

"If it's not your story, you're part of it right? Just tell your part in it!" Hana sounded slightly frustrated, which I wasn't used to hear. We hadn't talked to Hana much, lately.

"But my part was because of Tsuna-kun—"

"So he _is_ the reason! Just let me find him," Hana exclaimed, with a step towards the door. Tsuna gave a small squeak and took my sleeve before dragging me backwards out of view.

Hana stared at the crack.

"What was that?"

We froze.

"Hana, you've got this all wrong! You wouldn't want to know this, because it's _dangerous!" _Kyoko said, her voice rising slightly. Hana seemed to whirl around, and we relaxed a bit but didn't move.

Call it morbid curiosity and inherent sticky-beaking.

"I realised that when Sawada and his friends always came back with bandages. Yamamoto even went to hospital, right? And Alice couldn't use her hands for weeks after that _sumo match_ of your brothers, right?"

You could practically hear Kyoko's wince.

"But it's still not my place. You know me, Hana. I respect the people we're talking about to say anything."

Kyoko would become a good Mafia wife. Peer pressure didn't phase her conviction at all, only fuelling hurt. A good emotion if one was trying to be angry.

But Kyoko wasn't that type of person.

"Kyoko, you know I'm your," Hana started to say before laughs echoed down the hallway.

"Juudaime!" Gokudera called to us, before seeing Tsuna's deer in the headlights look and sized the situation up without even needing to drop his boisterousness. "Our walk to the entrance is exceptionally long today, isn't it? We should enjoy it together, without freaky-eyes!"

That statement was exceptionally stupid. But Gokudera was known to spout stupid stuff in front of Tsuna, sometimes.

Tsuna had an adorable confused expression on his face.

"Huh, Gokudera—"

"Gokudera," I interjected, turning Tsuna so we were all facing the same direction as Gokudera as he caught up, "we walk this hallway every day. It's as short as always."

Gokudera easily sneered at me.

"A walk with Juudaime is always wonderful, freaky-eyes!"

I shot a bemused insult back at him. "Stalker."

"Albino."

I rolled my eyes, and we all walked forward into the line of sight of the crack. "Octopus hair."

"My hair has no resemblance to any sea creature!"

I shrugged.

"As Mukuro doth protest with fruit," I countered, and Tsuna just smiled and nodded nervously. Just after we passed the door, it swung open and an irritated Hana with a harried looking Kyoko were looking at us. There was silence, before Kyoko shot us a bright smile.

Good actor, she was.

"Hi Tsuna-kun, Gokudera-kun, Alice! Why are you all here?"

"Getting out of school," I deadpanned. "Chrome's coming with me. Where is she?"

Kyoko tilted her head.

"I don't know. I think someone said she was near the courtyard though. With Yamamoto, maybe?"

I groaned, and Gokudera muttered under his breath. Kyoko and Tsuna both looked at us both with 'what's wrong?' faces, while Hana stared at us all again, at the fringe of the group.

I felt a pang of sympathy.

"Yamamoto thinks baseball is therapeutic," I muttered. Gokudera muttered an agreement.

"That stupid baseball idiot will think baseball will make her feel better," he sighed.

We shook our heads in tandem, before both getting mutually disturbed at not arguing with each other.

"Well, let's go," I said while purposely dragging Tsuna down the hallway. Gokudera immediately burst into outrage.

"How dare you!"

"Treat my dear, precious, beloved, wonderful, Juudaime like that?" I finished for him dryly as I continued frog marching Tsuna along. "Yeah, you've said it many times already, Gokudera.

Gokudera spluttered, Tsuna gave a small shudder of a chuckle, and Kyoko gave small giggles. Hana didn't get the joke, and just picked up the cleaning supplies and walked away throwing a careless 'bye' over her shoulder. Kyoko looked at her worriedly, before following.

We continued down the hallway.

Yamamoto really _was_ teaching Chrome baseball.

And Chrome was smiling, and was still smiling when I told her she would be staying with me and Grey.

"Thank you, Alice-san."

I waved it off.

"No prob."

* * *

At dinner that night, I sat Chrome down (she had no objections) and stacked a whole lot of anatomy books in front of her.

"I want you to study these seriously. The least you could do was understand what type of functions the organs Mukuro gives you do. You know what he's helping, right?"

Chrome nodded, self-consciously putting a hand over her stomach.

"Without him," she said softly, "I would not be able to even eat, or feel, or breath. He is my life."

Yeah. Deep stuff. That's good and all, but…

"Grey got all these for you specially you know," I mentioned casually. "They're all yours now, specially picked to be read in order so that the difficulty doesn't stop a medical novice. There's even a medical dictionary to the side," I nodded to the book beside the pile of books. "Consider it a gift. It'll become useful."

Chrome was staring at me, eyes wide with astonishment.

"A… gift?" she said weakly.

"Err, yeah."

"It is too much," Chrome shook her head, her fingers tracing the books in front of her. I suddenly had a panic moment. Had she been going to school? I assumed since she had previously been in a rich family with high expectations she would have come from a good education.

"Is it too hard? I'm sorry then, I'll have Grey buy more books for you," I frowned.

Hook, line and sinker.

"No, this is fine really! I can understand these, it's just that you're giving me so much when I have done nothing for you."

"Don't worry," I dismissed yet again. "You're doing a lot of things for me that you don't know about." I felt like evil-smirking at the thought of Mukuro owing me… yet again.

Chrome looked at me with doe-eyed admiration and trust.

…damn, I felt a little guilty now.

(but hey, all part of the plan, right?)

"But these are yours to study. I won't push you, but I would like you to know about the organs that are being replaced by Mukuro. Please consider it as important advice."

Chrome nodded fervently.

"I'll study. Thank you, Alice."

I smiled.

She called me Alice. No suffix and everything.

"It's fine Chrome. We're friends, aren't we?"

* * *

The next day, Reborn nodded tersely at me.

He had had the dream with Checker Face.

And he had started the plan. We had successfully drawn his curiosity and attention. Now it would all be too easy to keep it. The thing was that we had to keep secrets away from him, so Tsuna could realise his inheritance.

Reborn hopped from Tsuna to me, sitting on my shoulder contemplatively. We were silent as we both let the fact seep into our conscious, to know that there was a very stressful week or two ahead of us.

(because it was only a week – but in that week…)

So it has begun.

I glanced at Chrome, and how she had brought one of the smaller medical books to school, thin arms wrapped around the dictionary and the medical book. She was concentrating so hard she couldn't even feel the stares of the boys around her. Kyoko was sitting next to a terse Hana, both tense, both uncomfortable, both quite desperate. Kyoko was too blindingly happy. Hana was too sarcastic.

Yamamoto gave another easy laugh to the classmate that he was talking to, while Gokudera lounged in his seat, his glasses perched on his nose, as he continued drawing UMAs and numbers to prove their scientific existence (if he only put those numbers to _another_ use…)

Tsuna smiled at all of us, before sitting down on his seat.

The last normal day.

* * *

The Arcobaleno were going to their representatives soon. I had to get into position and find Hibari.

We had to talk.

It was funny, how fate threw us together exactly when I didn't want to, but hey. Plan is plan. And this plan included me talking to Hibari before all the representative rivalry officially started up.

The class all stood up and bowed, getting dismissed and getting out of the classroom in clumps of friends. Tsuna around now would be halfway home by now, I thought as I meandered out of the school entrance and stood in front of the plaque of Nami-chu. Previously decided to go back home, see, to get changed and prepare for an exhausting verbal battle with Hibari.

Wicked. I was jumping in excitement.

Leaning on the wall, I was surprised to see Tsuna rounding the entrance and smiling at me.

"Alice, we need to talk."

I looked at my watch and shrugged. Sure. Grey had told me this morning he was going to be five minutes late.

"I've got five minutes."

Tsuna nodded, his face serious.

"I've been waiting for you to talk to me, Alice, but you don't seem to remember. But since I want to know, I've been wondering about something."

"What?" I asked, curious.

"In the future, remember that battle you had with that gold eyed person? Belle?"

Okay, I had a bad, bad feeling about this. Call it instinctual premonition.

"You two were talking about something. Belle said something, and you were really angry at that Brighteye secret coming out, and then we escaped. You promised to tell me later but," Tsuna shrugged, "it never really came with Byakuran, then winding down, then Enma and the people. But now it seems like it's all over so I wanted to ask you. What is it all about?"

Ah, the irony. It killed me. 'It seems like it's all over' indeed.

But what was Tsuna talking about? I really couldn't remember many details about that night. I tried to wipe it from my memory as much as I could – the only image I couldn't erase was Belle's face as she stared at Byakuran losing, and the image of her slowly crumpling into herself.

Then my imagination took over, and I saw her dissolving into sparkles, to Bill, to Heaven.

(which of course couldn't happen)

"I've forgotten a lot of stuff. Can you tell me, Tsuna?" I said blankly, as I tried to remember without prodding painful memories.

Tsuna gave a faint worried smile.

"Belle said your flames ate your life. What was that about?"

Oh.

I paled.

_Oh._

* * *

**And another person is on the verge of finding out – after she spilled the beans to Reborn too.**

**Sigh. Alice. I'm sorry you never get a break.**

**Last time I updated I thought there was going to be a chapter the very next week. Then there was a family argument that was frankly horrible, and then I was like, the people would understand if I didn't want to write today, right?**

**Then school started. And oh gosh, I am nearly dying. I am neglecting some English just to type it all for you guys! XD I'm sorry.**

**I'm sorrrrry! I know it's nearly been a month, and I feel horrible! But hey! Next chapter is Hibari and Action! And lots of plot bending. Lots and lots of plot bending. Keke. I am quite excited about it, so don't worry. THANK YOU! THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! I was mindblown at all the support I had gotten from you all. You are all such a supportive group that I don't know what to say! TT_TT I know I've neglected some PMs and questions in the reviews, and I would usually reply but right now I have absolutely no time for even the four or five PMs I send every chapter for people who especially ask questions. I'm so sorry! But in a few months, my high school year will be over, and I can type all I want. Promise. XD **

**But before that, for the erratic updates… I'll promise you I'll write as much as I can. Don't worry. When I start I can't stop writing, so ^^. Reviews help too, of course. I hope you all liked this chapter, even if you all may think nothing happened? I did think a lot of things happened, but hey, your opinions!**

**(About AFS, for people who read it… would you believe me if I said I had been worried that chap 60 was too long as well? So your assertions to that not mattering helped a lot, even though I'm still trying to get out of the rut. I'm definitely going to continue it. Just not on school and MHJ and exams, haha)**


	62. Extra : please be happy, for me

"_Come on, Alice! We're going to graduate high school soon," Kyoko badgered me, giving me a happy smile. The group was behind her, Hana looking awkwardly flustered around Ryohei (adorable, those two. Ryohei still didn't know Hana liked him back, the dork, thinking she was 'much too good for him'. I just wanted to lock them in a closet somewhere) and the rest of the people were just filing in._

_Tsuna looked stressed these days, being shuttled from Italy and back sometime. Apparently he wasn't looking forward to senior year – the Ninth's lessons were becoming tougher. But Gokudera and Yamamoto were always behind him, and he took comfort in that. I was too, actually, but then I was getting left behind more and more as things got dangerous._

_When I confronted Tsuna about it, he just got that _look_ that he gives Lambo. You know, that one that's like 'I want to protect you' type of thing. I understood Lambo, but why me? Lambo was a kid still, but I was a capable fighter damn it._

_I was going to turn eighteen soon though. I guess it's a good thing he's leaving me out more – that way he doesn't depend on me so much, and therefore, when I disappear I have the knowledge they're capable without me._

_Usually they still are so broken up without me though. Yamamoto told me – the first mission they had without one of the 'core four' (lame name they gave us four), they had serious communication issues. They were used to me whispering in their ears. Their reconnaissance into the mountains at night into an enemy stronghold that was built into the mountain – so no easy ways to escape. They had to copy a file from one of their computer rooms._

_They nearly died. I was so horrified I never let them out of my sight again for the next six missions. _

_I think they appreciated it. These days, Tsuna and Yamamoto didn't even try to stop Gokudera and I arguing anymore. Gokudera had grown up a little after all (after that incident – he had been so _scared_ for Bianchi) and now he was more calm and level-headed. _

_But still had a hot temper. Gosh, was he crazy when he got mad. He just… never got angry at his own side anymore. _

"_Didn't brush your hair this morning, Gokudera?" I commented mildly, and Gokudera gave a smirk._

"_Well, at least I have hair, baldie."_

_I winced, running my hand at my shoulder-length hair. It had grown a bit slowly after the accident. No-one really behaved the same around me after that. His eyes immediately flashed remorse, and I grinned to alleviate it._

"_I think you're just envious of my thick, silver locks."_

_He smirked, before getting shoved to the side by an annoyed Lambo._

"I_ think Alice-nee's hair is super pretty, Baka-dera," he declared, before shoving a positively huge lollipop into Gokudera's mouth. It was so cute – I never expected me and Lambo to be so close. He was like the little brother that Jack would have loved to have. It helped that we were always picking on Gokudera though – we loved him that way. _

_Sometimes I worried, because fifteen year old Lambo had said I-pin and I were close. But I-pin and I were, although close and we had this sister thing going on, not like Lambo and I. That meant I had changed the future right? I wasn't acting like how another of my future selfs acted._

_But I was happy right now. _

…_I didn't want anything to change. Not even Lambo, or Gokudera's octopus hair._

_Lambo was still bratty of course. Just not around me. I realised how _smart_ he was. _

_It was the moment I realised we were so close. With how smart Lambo was, he could have hid it forever and ever, and no-one would have been the wiser. He allowed me to see his ability, and I acted accordingly. People thought it was weird I started having so many science textbooks in my room – who would ever imagine snot-nosed, obnoxious laughing Lambo would ever pick them up and learn them? (Once in awhile, there's some sticky notes with questions which I tried my best to answer)._

_Lambo was going to turn twelve soon. It was _just_ before my 'date of disappearance' and I had planned something really big. I hoped he liked it. _

_I hoped it could tide him over my death._

_Anyway, Kyoko had dragged me to the fields outside Namimori, and it was so pretty. I once commented it was my favourite place, and Tsuna had given this spot a wide-eyed stare._

"_I remember this place," he muttered to himself. "This was where future me was standing on that rainy day…"_

_Then his face had abruptly paled. I asked why. He shot me a wild glance, before staring at the spot before the lone tree in the field, and I had just given him that lone raised eyebrow, before poking him in the sleeve._

"_Tsuna," I had said patiently, "just enjoy the sunshine today? You've been way too stressed lately."_

_And he had _stared_ at me._

_I still don't get that day still, but whatever. Yamamoto was setting up the picnic blanket with Haru, and they were laughing together while I-pin had dragged Lambo over the side to spar. Ryohei and Hana were trying to unload the cars without touching each other (but kept 'accidentally' bumping into each other, I realised with a laugh)._

_Tsuna had gotten out of the car with a warm smile._

"_Everyone!" He greeted, his eyes roving over the field and the tree, and the river in the distance before assessing the group in front of him._

_And it was truly the whole group! There was me, by Kyoko's insistence. Haru came with Yamamoto, since they realised they lived near each other. Hana and Ryohei had come with us, and Gokudera had come from visiting Bianchi. Fuuta had joined to watch Lambo and I-pin, and even though Chrome couldn't be here, she had sent her owl. Even _Hibari_ was here, sniffing at the group in distaste and walking towards me._

_Reborn hopped out of the car behind Tsuna, just as Hibari had somehow, looking nonchalant and like he didn't actually come _approach_ us, not at all. He was just standing next to us by mere coincidence._

"_Hey, Hibari," I greeted with a smile. "How are you these days?"_

_He gave this deep breath out, before giving an assessing gaze towards Kyoko's arm latching on mine. Kyoko offered a sheepish grin._

"_I'm fine," he said shortly. "Kusakabe recommended me to interact with our closest and first allies, so therefore I responded to the first invitation on my desk," he continued to offer. "I didn't realise it was so… informal."_

_Kyoko smiled._

"_That's the best thing about picnics, Hibari-san!" She exclaimed, and it just showed how far Hibari had progressed to not even twitch for his tonfa._

"_Hn."_

_Okay, so his social skills hadn't improved _that_ much. But still. Progress._

"_Join us, Hibari," I said while Kyoko took me to the picnic basket. _

_And it was with the strange acceptance that he had towards me these days that he didn't even give a 'hn' of distaste of being told of something to do._

_The afternoon was filled with sunshine and laughter underneath that tree in that sun soaked field. We were young, we were happy. We were surrounded by our friends, that we trusted, who we knew would be there (no matter how reluctantly) if anyone ever faltered in this road that Tsuna had started us all on._

_Tsuna was smiling today._

"_Okay," Kyoko clapped her hands. "Today, since high school is nearly over, we're going to share our future dreams!" _

_She gave us a critical eye. Tsuna looked up in surprise, and before he could even open his mouth Kyoko interjected._

"_No, Tsuna-kun!" She waved a finger in his direction, and it was met with general laughter, making Kyoko smile. "We all know about the Mafia and stuff. No, what we would want to do if we didn't have all that." Some faces crumpled, and Kyoko's smile gentled. "Just this afternoon, okay?"_

"_Haru agrees!" Haru jumped to Kyoko's cause. "I love wondering about good what-ifs! Hmm, I'll go first."_

_Then Haru proceeded to stand in the middle of the picnic basket, her foot dangerously near the eggs as she regaled us with a tale of dragons and monsters and her being the clothes maker to a hero that (suspiciously) sounded like Tsuna. _

_Kyoko went next, giving a more realistic version of what she wanted. A nice uni life, a beautiful home, healthy parents, all of us celebrating many birthdays to come._

_Yamamoto offered that he wanted to be a baseball star (which Gokudera immediately scoffed at, and Yamamoto only gave a good-natured shove to his arm) or inherit his father's sushi shop._

_Gokudera didn't waste a minute to say 'UMA researcher'. _

_Lambo wanted to be a confectionary factory owner, and I-pin a librarian. Fuuta wanted to travel, and Hibari didn't deign to answer. Neither did Reborn, really, but Tsuna tilted his head and shrugged._

"_Any future with every one of you there with me would be the one I would choose."_

_My heart clenched._

"_What about you, Alice?"_

_I blinked. "Oh, is it my turn? Uh," I scratched my head, "I've never really thought about it."_

"_You told me you wanted to go to see the arctic lights, remember?" Tsuna prompted, and I smiled at him._

"_Yeah. But I guess… I…" I trailed off, closing my eyes and staring at the sun through my eyelids. Future? What future? _

"_I… I think I would like to get old. I want to find someone special that also thinks I'm special, and I want to, to," I blushed as much as I was able, "marry them, and live with them for the rest of my life in peace with my family, and you all. All of us just healthy and old, and we all die on the same day type of thing."_

_Haru hugged me._

"_That's so romantic, Alice!"_

_Hana gave me a sly look. "Well, she does read all those really bad teenage romance novels," she hinted, reaching over the eggs to punch my shoulder. I gave a sheepish grin._

"_It's just a dream though. It won't happen."_

_Yamamoto gave a tilt of his head._

"_Why not?"_

_I smiled._

"_Because I'm a Brighteye."_

_There was a silence, before Haru clapped her hands. "Okay, next. Hibari-kun!"_

_Hibari just gave grunt, and everyone laughed (quietly, but they were kind of certain now he wouldn't fly into the odd rage against them now)._

"_But talking about graduation, Alice, isn't your birthday just before that?"_

_I clenched my hands and gave them all a bright smile._

"_Yup. Why?"_

_They chuckled. _

"_Secret."_

* * *

_Yamamoto laughed even as he slugged onwards through the rain on the tarmac as they ran from exploding the enemy castle. He readjusted his grip around Alice's arm as she threatened to slip from the large scrape on her left leg when she had pushed Tsuna from harm's way._

"_I don't know Spain, Alice," he said with the smile still in his voice because damn, they both needed it right now. All four of them were rocks in their own way – Tsuna for his kind acceptance, Alice for her honesty, Gokudera for his wild impulse and genius and he was the one who washed away, who comforted and he _needed_ it right_ now_._

"_Are we running on the main road?" Alice asked, struggling to speak through the sheets of rain._

_They had chosen the day well. With the rain, no-one could track them. _

_Yamamoto shook his hair from his face, Shigure Kintoki solid against his back as he tried to continue running. Away, away. _

_They had left Gokudera behind when Yamamoto and Alice had left. Tsuna had already infiltrated far too deep, and all three of them had waited because only Tsuna could go in with his Sky Flames. Tsuna had taken too long. Gokudera was second in charge and ordered Alice to leave first to not bleed out and Yamamoto to take care of her. Alice had protested, but Yamamoto just hoisted her up, and they escaped._

_They left Gokudera behind, who had his cocky grin in place, as he turned around to delve into areas he would probably be caught - for Tsuna. He'd left them both behind._

"_We have to turn back."_

_Yamamoto's grip tightened._

"_We can't. Where are we, Alice?"_

_And she really couldn't. He had noticed – and probably Gokudera and Tsuna had at some level. But it seemed like he was the only one who had noticed just how much she was hiding. _

_Her vision was at least fifty percent gone, she was getting sick more often. She was paler these days, and she calling her family back home more often. Her mobility had dropped at least thirty percent, but on missions still moved with her usual efficiency._

_Yamamoto had thought about confronting her about it before having a horrifying realisation. __The problem couldn't be money, or a lack of good doctors, or a lack of medical knowledge. They had all that. If Alice was still sick after so many months, and was getting worse… Yamamoto didn't want to draw the worst conclusion._

_With that, added onto an injury risking infection?_

_They _couldn't_ go back. _

"_Where?"_

_Silence._

"_If we get me to safety, you'll go back."_

"_I will."_

"_Run forward Yamamoto, to the direction to the city, but turn right when I tell you to."_

_Yamamoto continued to slog through, muddy water racing past his ankles as he ran on the side of the road just in case there were some late night travellers, and so that it was harder for their enemies to track them. The water ran roaring into a gutter, and Yamamoto nearly stumbled._

"_Right. We're almost there, Yamamoto. It's underground. Wrap your ring, now."_

_He wrapped both of their rings. They went underground – it was just a small room, with a dirt floor but it was a room, and it was temporary safety._

"_Go."_

_And he stared at those eyes, wondering how much longer he would be able to depend on their strength. He flashed a smile he wasn't sure she could see._

"_Be careful, Alice."_

"_You better come back safe with the two idiots."_

_Yamamoto was already gone._

_When he reached the fortress again, the sirens were wailing, and there was smoke coming out of the west wing where Tsuna and Gokudera were supposed to escape. _

"_They've caught them!" Someone yelled to another, who was combing the darkness and thought he was an ally. In the brief moment that it took Yamamoto to cross the five metres and knock him out, he wondered what type of world forced seventeen year olds to fight for their lives. _

_He stood there for a moment, in the sheets and sheets of rain and thought of his friends. The sick one who was waiting for them to come back. The two who were captured. He, the one who had to bear them all back to safety._

_He closed his eyes._

_Took a deep breath._

_And he ran straight into the fire, the siren loud in his ears as he unsheathed his sword that immediately dripped with all the power of his will._

_For his friends. Not the world, not the people who pulled them like strings._

_For his friends._

"_Shigure Souen Ryu!"_

_Alice waited for five hours and they never came back. She cursed, forced her eyes to _focus_, used the rudimentary first aid kit in the little room to change her bandages as tightly as she could and limped out of the room, pulling out grey flames even though Tsuna had prohibited them for a long time._

_She slipped them over herself and walked towards the stronghold, slipping the chopsticks out of her hair. _

_She needed her friends as much as they needed her._

* * *

_He watched, pride straightening his back and his shoulders, smoothing his face and making him not step into the room._

_Inside, Tsuna were laughing about something as he yet again scratched his head at a question. Alice just grumbled and solved it for him step by step._

_Somewhere inside, he knew. Somewhere, he acknowledged he wasn't good with people. They annoyed him, they were scared of him. Somewhere, he realised that didn't really deserve anyone thinking him special – nor him thinking anyone special. _

_Somewhere deep down, he realised he didn't deserve to love._

_A slow smile spread across her face, and he watched from the doorway, trying to ignore the boy initiated it._

_Pride straightened his back and widened his steps as he walked past the doorway._

"_Hey, did you see something pass?" He heard Tsuna say inside the room._

_Pride smoothed his face, squared his shoulders._

"_Maybe."_

_It was pride that willed him to walk away from that room._

* * *

_Ryohei was staring at his boxing gloves._

_Hana stood behind him, and gently touched them._

"_You haven't boxed for a long time, boxing champ," she prodded softly. It initiated a small smile, and he turned his tanned face towards her._

"_People need me, Hana. My family needs me. Especially now."_

"_So you noticed too?"_

_Ryohei laughed._

"_Who couldn't?" He turned to look at his boxing gloves again, reaching out to trace the curve of the plastic before walking out of the house, the bronzed yellow sunlight pouring through the doorway. Afternoon was giving way to evening; the sun was travelling to shine somewhere else now. Ryohei paused._

"_As their big brother, I'm not here to pick up the pieces. I'm here to catch them as they fall, so they never shatter in the first place."_

_Hana stood there, wanting to reach out and tug that sleeve and say 'I'm here for you too', but the words stuck in her throat. _

_She watched him walk away, wondering if there was anything she could do for her friends. _

_They survived with one another. Their world was brutality – sometimes she wondered if it was wise to demand to _know_ but it was too late now. She was part of it, and she understood how they were a net of people where there could be no betrayal or doubt about friendship. Everyone saved one another._

_But what if they couldn't save someone?_

_Hana could only yet again on the sidelines as she watched the next few months, one of the thin strands trying to tie them all back together while another kept dropping farther and farther out of their reach._

* * *

"_Alice, you can't go onto anymore missions." I'd been expecting this anyway. I tried not to feel the sting. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?" Tsuna asked softly behind his large desk. That's where I knew he was, anyway. Soft footsteps to my right._

"_You can't even tell how many fingers I'm holding up, right?"_

_I shrugged in defeat. _

"_No."_

"_Why didn't you tell anybody?"_

"_You all still need me, Tsuna," I said simply. "I want to do the things I'm able to when I still can."_

"_W-what do you mean?"_

_Tsuna dreaded that bittersweet twist to her smile._

* * *

_Lambo looked at Hibari, at his slightly shaky hands, and the stiff back._

"_You loved her, didn't you?" _

"_No, I didn't," Hibari denied as he straightened out and made no move to go out of the kitchen. He was standing where she had always waited for him. He was looking out the corridor._

_The funeral was tomorrow._

"_You loved her didn't you?"_

_Hibari growled and turned around, only to be met with a crackle of green flame, and stubbornly dry red eyes. Lambo had cried so much that he had no tears left and cried even more than that. He kept expecting her to ruffle his hair, or to curl up with him to watch the latest kids movie, or torment him with the newest section of bad teenage romance. But she wasn't there anymore. She was gone. _

_So he cried because there was nothing else that he could do to make it better._

"_I loved her too," he continued, and saw the other man relax slightly in confusion. "She was my sister. I was going to screen everyone who loved her, and you were one of them. I saw it, you know. You…" his voice broke. He couldn't talk anymore. He told himself to breathe. He told himself it would get better soon. _

_(Lies)_

_It was quiet in the kitchen before the silence was broken. The deep voice had a note of defeat for the first time he had ever heard it._

"_There is no point in not releasing something that has left for the hands of death."_

"_But you loved her, didn't you?"_

"_There can be no love for a corpse that was not strong enough to fight for life."_

"_You loved her."_

"_There is no point to feel grief."_

"_You loved her."_

"_There is no point to love."_

_Lambo was silent, sitting cross-legged on the table looking at this proud man. His back was too stiff still, and the box in his hand had warped with the strength of Hibari's grip as he stared down the corridor before resolutely turning away. His face was unreadable._

"_But one cannot help but feel… the regret of what may have been."_

* * *

_I love you._

_How many times do I have to say it_

_to bring_

_you_

_back?_

* * *

He closed his eyes.

_There, it was the little church. There were hills with lots of green grass, rolling hills full of it, and there was that church right there. In the middle of grass and flowers and trees that she loved. She liked the space. The church bell was tolling. There were people milling around. _

_Yamamoto gave a wave and Haru on his arm gave a solid wink in his direction as he stepped out of the car nervously. Kyoko flounced over, and giggled at him before slipping through the door, and he briefly heard some irritated cursing about 'stupid damn long dress, going to trip me over…'_

_Everyone was in colourful clothes. No, they were wearing white, and he was wearing white as well. A white tuxedo, or a suit. Not black. Never black. They were wearing white, for happiness, for a new future. _

_(not black)_

_He walked in, and got accosted by Gokudera, who was looking weird in white, but fussed over him and pushed him towards the door where he was greeting the guests. He was stiff with all of them, but they all smiled at him in bemused understanding. _

_Lambo was bouncing somewhere at the back definitely not preparing to be ring boy. I-pin was scolding him again._

_He couldn't even begin the smile that usually came from listening to his friends, and the bells were tolling again before they fell silent. _

_The church was beautiful. All stained glass and honeyed walls. The organ… no, the organ was left to the side. A piano had been wheeled in from the back, and played some background music as the guests settled in. The pews slowly filled with soft white figures, and he walked up to the front. He waited. Time seemed to slow down and fast forward and suddenly the door opened._

_Her eyes bore into his, and the only thing that made him smile since the day started was that she was nervous too. She had that constipated smile on._

_She was at his side. The white robed priest (not black, never black) said some things he didn't listen to. He was allowed to face her. Her face was white. Pale. But healthy, and she could see. She could see. She could see, and she was standing there in white and she smiled at him._

"_I think you're special," he whispered to her. _

"_You…" she whispered, before time sped forward. He saw them living their lives together, just like she wanted. They grew old together, they were happy. They lived in a small house, and no-one stood in lines to pay respects to them. Her grey hair grew long, and she let him play with it in the morning, before they got up, twilight hours. She never wore black, and she smiled at him, her eyes clear and seeing him._

_They traveled together. They went around the world, and they bought the snow jackets they wore when they stood underneath the sky in Norway, looking at the sky shifting with greens and blues and yellows. She smiled, her hands deathly cold as she reached to him._

_"You..."_

_They were eighty, and they sat on their porch. They laughed, and reminisced, and they wondered, and they smiled together while clutching photos and thinking who to call first to catch up. Gokudera in Italy? Yamamoto in Japan?_

_She stood up with a little difficulty, and he tried to help her only to grin when he also had to struggle to get into the house. _

_They held hands into the house._

"_You're special," he whispered to her._

"_You," she answered with her eyes clear and looking at him. "Promise me you'll be happy without me?"_

The door knocked, and Tsuna opened his eyes.

_"Juudaime, please come out, it's been a week, please, please," Gokudera said with a croak in his voice. They needed him, the voice pleaded. They couldn't lose another person in a time like this. Please, please, come out of the room._

Everyone out there was wearing black outside.

_"Please, Juudaime, you have to take care of yourself. Juudaime, please…"_

Outside, she was gone.

_"Please…"_

Tsuna stared out the window, wishing he could close his eyes again. He could. He could.

Behind his eyelids, he saw her. She could see him.

They were happy together.

_"Please, Juudaime."_

Tsuna closed his eyes.

* * *

_Are you _

_alone in the dark?_

_Are you_

_scared in your death?_

_Think of me, if you are. Even if I can't reach you._

_Think of me._

_I love you._

_Think of me._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_Don't leave me._

* * *

**People were requesting future extras, and I realised OH WOW IT'S BEEN A HECK OF A LONG TIME THAT I HAVEN'T UPDATED so hey, I scrounged these out from somewhere and updated them! I hope you all liked them – haha, they aren't that lighthearted, but next week I'll have whopper of a chapter full of plot and hopefully (my goal) of half of all those fights in that tournament arc. I'm going to whiz through that! MUAHAHAHA**

**XD **

**I'll answer questions now. **

**So there was a question to Reborn's answer to Alice's 'I want to have a family, so…' a few chapters ago. Reborn understood why Alice wanted to see her family (and being ripped away from them) because Reborn had that happen to him. He had his whole life ripped away from him in the most horrible way possible, and he had rebuild a life from scratch as someone else, degraded to a baby. So Alice's appeal towards wanting to meet the pieces of her past he truly understood, as he understands the desperate want to go back into the past, and become the person before he was 'Reborn'.**

**Second – Hana is Ryohei's girlfriend in the future in the anime, because you know Ryohei's reaction to having a girl's picture on his desk in the future? In the anime, there's a matching photo on Hana's desk featuring her instead of Ryohei. Putting the two pictures together… means Hana is Ryohei's girlfriend in the future. XD**

**And err… please resend other questions if you have them! I'm really tired, so hehe… if you don't want to, I'll go through my reviews and try to find the questions anyway.**

**AND IF YOU PMed ME! ERR… I WILL REPLY SOON. Like, in two or three days? *grin***

**Please review and tell me what you thought about these? It's been an emo fest, but they were partially inspired by some of Agent0011 requests. ^^ And I was in an emo mood from… watching the Great Gatsby. TT_TT**


	63. Plan, START!

"Alice, what was that about?"

Ah, it was unfortunate for Tsuna to start asking now, just when…Hey, Grey was coming in a few minutes or so, wasn't he? I discreetly checked my watch. Ah, another four and a half minutes left. There was suddenly a hand blocking my view – I looked up.

"No, Alice, no trying to delay time or anything. Tell me straight out." Tsuna tried to crack a smile, but all I saw was the nervous twitching he always did when he had to do a confrontation. He _hated_ confrontations. With a burning passion. He gave a little nervous 'hiie' when I looked up at him contemplatively, and he was already shuffling from one foot to the other. He only did that when he was fighting the urge to run away.

I tried not to crack a smile. Silly little Tsuna. Or maybe not so silly – Tsuna had a much better memory than I expected.

Trying to calm down my heart, I tried to analyse the situation as critically as I could. If I told him, what would Tsuna do?

_Forbid me from using it, probably. But is his character strong enough to _force_ me when I obviously use it even when I know its liabilities?_

The Tsuna in the manga would definitely not be strong enough. He would stutter, he would be shocked. Maybe he would run away, his eyes widened in horror, and spend a sleepless night wondering how I could live and fight like that with a probably (tragic) past that all female heroines seem to have, with the mafia and all. Then he would approach me the next day, asking if there's any other way, go away dejected, get some guru advice from Reborn and then come to terms in action. That would give me a few days – and I _had_ a few days. If Tsuna went away running, he would be greeted back home with Reborn to meet with Dino and he would have no time to give advice or anything. The planning for the representative battle would keep him busy.

But that was the Tsuna in the manga.

No matter how much I wished it (or not, it was hard to know because sometimes I was _glad_ Tsuna seemed to have changed – but that tiny, doubting bit in my head always wondered if it would affect my Judgement made it hard to be completely happy), this Tsuna was different.

He might not _act_ differently. Oh no, Tsuna still got nosebleeds when he saw up a girl's skirt. Still failed in school tests. But here's the difference – this was reality.

Tsuna's athletics marks were rising (as to be expected), and from that, he was just that bit more confident. When the teacher yelled at him, or a student called 'Dame Tsuna', he didn't immediately melt into a puddle of pessimistic goo and stare at Kyoko longingly while cursing his bad luck and fate. Now he would give a laugh, scratch the back of his head with a _huge_ blush and slightly shaky hands, and then turn around and talk to me, or Yamamoto, or watch Gokudera beat up the person who insulted Juudaime.

He could go up and say good morning to Kyoko now.

(And then rush back to me or Yamamoto with large eyes and a horrified blanch muttering _oh my god his hair was a mess wasn't it?_ And we would appropriately be nice friends and comfort him.)

My point is, Tsuna was different.

So therefore, he may act differently.

…In conclusion to my extended analysis, there was one word of conclusion that I could think of.

_Damn_.

"Alice, are you okay?" Tsuna was starting to look concerned for me.

Oh right. I zoned out.

"Yeah, it's cool. Um, I meant, it's fine. So your question was Belle right?"

_Should I lie? Not lie? Lies get found out later anyway, and Gokudera would shoot dynamite at me if he found out._

Before my mind made up, my mouth was already betraying me. Damn it, I was getting too relaxed these days.

"It's true," my stupid mouth said without consulting my brain.

Then was a moment of silence. I observed the wind fluttering through Tsuna's hair. When it hit the right light, I realised in a moment of spontaneous poetry, that Tsuna's hair reflected quite a beautiful golden colour that reminded me of summer drenched wheat and Dino's hair.

(I was hoping Tsuna was going to start running away anytime now. Anytime you're ready, Tsuna. I promise not to chase you like a demented stalker…)

"Is there anything you could do?" Tsuna asked with his eyes horrified and wide and scared.

Okay. So the eyes widening happened. The horror happened. The question 'is there anything else…' was also predicted.

So where was the _running away?_

Gah! I wanted a nice wall to hit my head on.

"No, not really. It's just how we are, Tsuna. Our flame is just different."

"Is it like Mukuro's abilities when his eye turns into numbers and he does something strange? Mukuro told me once that he didn't use all of his abilities because there was such a heavy cost on the user."

Interesting. Mukuro told Tsuna that?

"Kind of. But you understand how everything has a cost on the user? Your Hyper Dying Will didn't let you move for the next two weeks the first time without training, Mukuro's tactic of controlling people led to a decrease in efficiency in his attacks as he had to focus on so many different people at once. Our Flame is just that – to use it is to lose some time off your life. It's no big deal."

"_No big deal?"_ Tsuna choked out after another few seconds.

(I secretly wondered where Grey was. It should have been at _least_ five minutes now right? But no, my watch told me only one and a half minutes had passed.)

"Alice, it's your _life!"_

"Yeah, and I chose to use it to fight like a lot of others."

"Is that why most Brighteyes don't live until thirty?"

I shot Tsuna a surprised and serious glance. "Where did you hear that?" I asked, wondering what other trivia he knew that he had hid from me.

"It doesn't matter! Don't try to change the subject!" Tsuna had totally forgotten to be shy now, I realised. It was that personal. I felt strangely touched.

"Your question? Yeah, that's right. Most Brighteyes don't live that long because of how we use our flames. It's our greatest weapon and our curse with the exception of the person who controls the whole information system. And that's only because they never fight."

"And you don't care?"

I shrugged. "Of course not. I've been raised in this world knowing all about it," I lied while remembering that shocked moment in the future when Jared told me about the truth of the grey Flame. With power comes a price, of course. "I don't care, Tsuna. Death is death and the current fight is what I care about, because without the present, there's no future."

Tsuna seemed crushed.

"That's true, but Alice… What about us? Why didn't you tell us? We would—"

"What, Tsuna? What would you all do? Stop me from fighting when you all needed me? Leave me behind on group missions?" He shook his head wildly.

"Try and _help _you! Why didn't you trust us?"

"I do trust you."

"You—"

Tsuna cut himself off as his eyes widened in realisation. He stopped pacing around on the spot and looked at me.

"I think I understand you more now, Alice."

Hm?

"You do trust us. You trust us because you know us too well. And because you know us so well, you lie and hide from us because you think you know how we will react. You have this plan all in your head about everything, and you're probably right most of the time. Because of that, you think you _have_ to hide and lie and do all this stuff to protect us, or we would do something you wouldn't like."

Ouch. Tsuna's hyper intuition sometimes was just a bit…

"So the question is, what wouldn't you like? What are you hiding to protect us? Or..." He slowed down to stand in front of me, brown eyes wide and innocent as usual, but it was shadowed by how piercing his look was. I shivered, and fought the urge to take a step back. "Or what are you hiding to protect _yourself?"_

Okay. This perceptive Tsuna was scary.

"Did I get it right, Alice?" He suddenly looked very scared, even though his eyes had been blazing with conviction just a second before. His posture had diminished; he was wilting, going back into his Dame-Tsuna shell that he'd been wearing for so long. I tried to understand him – what was happening? "Did I offend you? I'm sorry; I don't usually say what I think…"

Oh Heaven.

He didn't _usually_ say what he thought. Does that mean…

I pushed it out of my mind for now.

"No, Tsuna. You didn't offend me." I took a step closer to ruffle his hair. "This is just showing your growth as a leader. You should speak your opinions and thoughts out more often. This is a good sign. You don't have to be scared."

He looked at me with wide eyes, and I nodded. "Don't be scared. You're our Boss, remember?"

Tsuna started to give a tentative smile, his whole posture wavering between indecisiveness and awkward acceptance. I looked on a bit sadly, and I think that showed on my face because Tsuna's posture changed to one of concern. He was such a _nice_ person – and these were the times when I felt sad that I didn't step in when he was in Primary school. That was when I had been sticking to the plot though. I have changed now.

I took a deep breath, before hardening my expression and interrupting anything Tsuna had wanted to say to me. I put a hand on his shoulder.

"You're saying that I should trust you, and I don't need to protect myself from you because you're trustworthy, right?" My eyes hardened, and he flinched under my hand. "How can you prove it?"

The thought seemed to boggle his mind.

"Prove it?"

"Yes. You say such wonderful grand words, Tsuna." At his stricken glance – for even if Tsuna might be more perceptive than he seemed, he was still a boy. An insecure boy who had been bullied since he went to school and had never had friends before – I tried to stand firm. I could virtually feel his thoughts. Berating himself for being too honest with me?

Now who was the hypocrite now?

"You say such wonderful grand statements which might or might not be true – but now, what are you going to do about it? You're my friend, and I trust you. But even the closest of friends understand that some things can't be said. These grey Flames use my life, Tsuna. If I told other people, some could use it and kill me by forcing me into a position where I had to use it for a long time. So I trust you. But to what extent?"

I paused for dramatic effect because there was a breeze blowing and Tsuna had to understand this for the future of his relationships. Maybe many people would be endeared by his innocent bulldozing into the heart of the problem. Others would only exploit it.

Tsuna had to _understand_.

"So you're my friend."

And I hated myself for what I was going to say next.

"But to what extent?"

_(ah, but the sacrifices)_

Tsuna stared at me. Then he reached out a hand, but I moved away.

"Alice, I—"

"Remember, you're a leader." I smiled past him. "Grey, what good timing. You're one minute late."

I must have sounded a bit petulant, because Grey gave an awesome butler superman smile and just opened the door to the large fat, normal car that I liked.

"Miss, I'm sorry for disturbing your conversation. Excuse me, Tsuna." He gave such a polite bow to Tsuna that he immediately got flustered and started spouting embarrassed comments.

Innocent little Tsuna.

He only woke up to the situation when the car door closed, and Grey gave a super butler smile and slid into the driver's seat and drove me away.

"No, Alice!" I heard him calling, but when Grey gave a questioning glance behind I grinned and told him to go to Hibari's house as planned.

I flumped back into my chair.

Oh gosh was I exhausted.

I got out of that predicament.

…Somehow.

(Of course it was Grey and his awesome distracting skills, and humongous scoops of luck. Now if the impending confrontation had the same type of luck…)

* * *

Ah, it was nice in his good old library. Nice and quiet. The people who came here were mostly spirits from his earlier judgements, or people who wanted a nice book to appreciate. No loud noises, no stupid angels, no weirdos on the street thinking Heaven was synonymous to freedom and skinny-dipping into clouds when the signs clearly said 'no floating'.

Seriously. _Skinny-dipping. _In _his_ day…

"Oh Great Angel!" Some nitwit trilled on a high C with a perfectly smooth boyish soprano, "The Great Being is calling for your Wonderfulness for the monthly afternoon to Tea Talk for Inspection of your Affairs!" Having sung all that in an ear-piercingly loud operatic style, the young boy gave a few chords to accompany on a harp that puffed out of nowhere.

"Stop that blasted harp, you newbie," Bill grunted under a large pile of books.

The young angel messenger fluttered _delicately _and _concernedly_ with his honey locks gleaming (somehow) in the dim rays of light filtering through the forest of bookshelves. His _large, blue _eyes literally _swam_ with his distress. He started a delicate melody for his next words—

"Ah, your Prodigious Cherubim! Are you alri—?"

He got knocked out of the air by an irate bald old man.

"Call me Cherubim again and I report you to your division. Why are you singing anyway?"

"It is protocol to sing everything we say, sir," the angel rapped out. "It's the new orders from the top, yo."

"I hate rap."

"Do you prefer pop instead?" The angel replied quickly, whipping out some nice bubbly poppy background soundtrack from somewhere.

"No. I prefer talking."

"It's against protocol," the angel said, trying to sound cute, and winking at Bill.

He stared in horror.

"There was a wink in the choreography in the official version," the messenger explained in Tuvan throat singing when he realised that Bill didn't seem to like pop either.

"Just… just get out."

The messenger switched genres when Bill didn't seem to have the reaction he wanted. Ah! He brightened. Maybe…

"I can't until you leave the library, my uppers told me," he growled out in rock. A heavy and impressive drum solo shook a stack of his books to the floor. Bill looked at it in despair. No! His perfectly stacked, alphabetically listed apiology books by author!

Bill was out of the door in less than a second.

* * *

Bill growled at the table of upper Angels of 'something or another'.

"Who set that new protocol of singing messengers? I'm going to kill them. After they organise all my books in the storeroom by genre and author and age," he said as he stared murderously in the general direction of the table. "If you want to know, its ten thousand metres deep."

No-one paid him any attention except for the happy-go-lucky voice that floated somewhere to the… left?

"Ahaha! World, don't say such mean things! We all know you're a softie at heart!"

"Music, call me Bill."

"Wasn't it beautiful though! All the pretty colours~"

"Not all people see sound as colours, idiot."

"Your voice is a nice colour you know!"

"What, no, I was talking about—"

"Hot pink!"

Bill sighed and gave up, sitting in the nearest free chair that he immediately regretted sitting in.

"Hello… World."

"I said, call me—oh, it's you. Hello, Judgement."

"You haven't changed."

And Bill secretly thought Judgement hadn't changed either. Creepy woman. She was cold one second, and warm the next. That was the thing about judging – it was all about the decision of 'good' and 'bad' at its most basic level. Nice to the 'good'. Cold to the 'bad'.

That was why he preferred Angels of the things like Music, or good old Arty. His good old friend Cedar too. They all understood. Good and bad weren't even two sides of the same coin. They were mashed up together in this big bowl of jelly, and one had to eat it right next to the bad. Judgement forced them into two sides, and flipped the coin.

Well, she was being quite cold to him now, wasn't she?

"I'm not changing my mind, Judgement."

"You know, the suffering of some you judge is too great for their previous sins, while others bear less pain than they should."

"Yeah, I know."

"That is unfair. You should rehash…"

"It's your division's fault that we have such problems in the first place. You didn't account for so many people, did you?"

"Your way is much worse than others. World, you are very powerful, one of the most powerful, yet you degrade yourself into being called literature because what, you are afraid? We are equals in power, so I cannot influence your decision. It is a pity, no?"

"I keep books," Bill said stubbornly.

"Ah, but in books what worlds are hidden!" Judgement, that stupid &$*#-face said condescendingly.

"You don't understand."

"Of course I do not. If I did, then I would not be arguing my point with you."

"What would you do in my place, your _highness?_"

"Give them what they deserve."

"I have two thousand of _your_ extra work on me on top of my own. Spare your talk, Judgement. I don't have the time."

"But you do, unlike me."

That reply was replied with silence.

Bill decided Judgement must have the fatal syndrome of last-wordism, so therefore the only way to shut her up was to not talk. Simple. It was only too bad that fighting in Angel society was frowned upon. Oh how he wanted to punch that stupid face…

But that would just spark another argument with the Angel for Equal Rights.

Bah.

He hated stupid angel meetings. He could have been relaxing with a book and a cup of hot chocolate instead.

There was a hint of a sparkle, and a messenger came singing the announcement of the Grand High One in electronic pop.

Bill groaned and plugged his ears.

Throughout the whole meeting however, the words swirled in his mind. He _could_ give some what they deserved. But with his time constraints, (for even time didn't stop for Angelic Beings, no matter how _radiant_ and _beautiful_ and _wonderful_ and _etcetera_ they were) he could only attend two hundred, at the most.

It would be unfair for the others.

(but when has the world ever been fair?)

"World – I mean, Bill, where are you going?" Cedar asked from his left when he got up in the middle of the meeting.

"Bathroom," he grunted.

Cedar raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. He was glad. At least that idiot excuse worked – instinct from his human years, he supposed. Because Angels didn't need toilets. They were inhuman, alien – monsters?

He went back to get some hot chocolate and hid deep in his library so no singing messenger could find him.

He was fine, sulking alone.

As always.

* * *

"Kusakabe, do you know where Hibari is?" I asked Kusakabe when he appeared to open the door. Kusakabe smiled, the piece of grass between his teeth wagging as he replied. I tried not to stare at his pompadour too obviously.

It's just… so large. It defies gravity!

"Hibari-san is inside, Alice-san. Do you want me to tell him you're coming?"

I nodded. "Sure, thanks. It's important."

Kusakabe disappeared inside then appeared a minute later. "He doesn't want company right now, I'm afraid," he said with a regretful smile.

Well, I thought as I looked at Kusakabe, at least he seemed sincere. I bet Hibari wasn't even doing anything really important. Maybe something like sleeping with Hibird chirping the school song in his ear. It seemed like something he would do.

"It's important – about some coming fights," I insisted, and even before Kusakabe had raised an eyebrow there was a looming shadow behind him.

Hibari had very obviously not been sleeping or eating.

He'd been reading.

I stared.

Hibari was holding a _book_. Was I hallucinating?

"Let her in," he said even as I tried to sneakily read the cover because it looked strangely familiar. The only books I read these days were those really crappy (yes, even I knew those _addictive_, and horribly written romance novels were a waste of time) romance novels, and textbooks.

No way… Hibari liked bad teen romances as well?

"Hibari, what are you reading?" I asked the first thing I stepped into his house for the first time. He grunted a response.

I took it as 'I read bad teenage romances' for personal amusement.

I tried not to laugh, because if I did, I was sure Hibari would somehow read my thoughts and then bite me to death. But still, Hibari being engrossed in Yamamoto's and Ayumi's romance! Pfft…

So in an attempt to regain a sense of sanity, I observed the room I was being lead to.

It was unsurprisingly Spartan – there was nothing that indicated someone was living here except from the cleanliness of the place. Figured Hibari would be OCD about cleaning though.

The walls were some off-shade of white that looked like blue but not white. The ceiling was pure white (which was how you noticed the walls actually _weren't_ white, but some type of weird white-blue) and there was a chair in the living room on a bare wooden floor.

It was…nice?

Gah, who was I kidding? This was worse than a hospital. No wonder Hibari liked sleeping there. And the school. The school disciplinary room was much warmer and beautiful than _this_.

I remembered Hibari's future rooms – all decorated with an intricate Japanese décor and personal taste, and looked at his rooms here. Were this his personal choice, or was there something else behind this?

"Where're your parents?" I asked blandly. "I don't want them interrupting."

"They do not live here," Hibari replied just as flatly. Oh, he played the game well. "What did you want to tell me?"

"That I want to team up with you in the coming fight," I said while wondering about the parent comment. He obviously had money from somewhere – he practically owned the hospital, and where did the helicopter come from last time in the Shimon Island? No, he was cared for, but it was more like a… business transaction.

Thinking of my own parents and their love made me want to pity Hibari.

Which, of course, was a death sentence. So I stopped that train of thought right away.

"You have the little animal," he said, his eyes suddenly sharper with his interest in the conversation. I nearly huffed. So I was _boring_, was I?

"Tsuna is going to fight with Dino, and their group is large enough as it is," I explained. "You know of the Arcobaleno?"

"Who doesn't?" He replied instead, which like all business talks, could mean a variety of things.

The main one, however… 'Who doesn't' implies that everyone knew of the Arcobaleno – yes, everyone knew of the Arcobaleno – everyone on the shadier side of life, that is. Hibari, I thought with my own interest sparked, could have deeper ties with the Mafia than I previously thought. Maybe not the Italian syndicates, or even the European side, if Reborn didn't know of him. His Asian looks would stand out. Maybe…

Hibari was smirking, as if he could see my thoughts.

I could wonder about that later, and search for his files. I never had a reason to do so before now, anyway.

"…The Arcobaleno have been offered a chance to break their 'curse' with representative fights."

And all the confusion that had been leaking out of Hibari (for as much as his considerable training would allow Hibari only to show bloodlust and all those happy things, he was still only a _teen_) cleared.

"The baby would ask…"

Yes, Reborn would ask Tsuna and Dino. Mammon would chose Varia. If one chose to notice, it was very obvious where Colonello would chose to put his vote on – Lal's CEDEF. Yuni had Giglio Nero, and Byakuran if needs be. The ones that weren't obvious were Fon, Skull, and Verde.

I nodded.

"There are seven babies," and Hibari gave me an irritated glance at that which implied 'duh, of course', "and Reborn's choices are quite obvious. Mammon too—" I paused to see if it hit any recognition in Hibari. It seemed like it did.

"Varia," he said with a rapidly curling smirk.

Damn, Hibari, don't think about fighting in a strategy meeting!

"Yes, and Yuni would chose her own family, of course."

"The other four," Hibari stated, his smirk still lingering.

"Three, actually. Colonello would chose the CEDEF and they would help."

"CEDEF?"

"Tsuna's father."

"Is he strong?"

No, that _wasn't_ the question, thank you Hibari.

"Yes, but that's not the point. CEDEF is quite strong in itself."

"Why would CEDEF help that baby?"

"Because Colonello loves Lal, who is in that organisation, and wants to revoke her curse instead of his."

I could feel the derision from Hibari that came from mentioning the all disgusting word 'love'. Yeah, yeah, we all know.

"_Anyway_, the last three are our main concern. They would be smart enough to realise that Tsuna is their greatest threat while knowing that not many groups would want to fight the Vongola and Cavallone alliance for them. So that's why we predict that they will go for groups or individuals that have fought Tsuna before, because they would definitely not mind having a go at Tsuna again."

"But those people have already been beaten by him before."

"Yeah, so they would probably be stronger by now."

"Rokudo Mukuro."

"And his gang? Verde, probably. He would target them first."

"Shimon?"

"The only one idiotic enough to do that would be Skull. They were _recently_ beaten, so they couldn't have gotten stronger, or want to beat Tsuna that badly. But they are part of the only choices, yes," I said.

"And me," he stated.

I smiled.

"Yes, and you."

"Fon."

It wasn't a question.

"You seem pretty confident. Why not Verde?"

Hibari gave me an assessing look, which I apparently passed. There was a pause though, before he looked out the window nonchalantly. I was already surprised enough that we were having a civilised conversation anyway, so I let Hibari take as long as he wanted.

"I've known Fon from before."

* * *

I lay on my back on my big plushy bed, sliding under the blankets and switching on my heater (it would take at least three hours for _this_ body to warm up the blankets) while thinking about the conversation with Hibari from before.

Fon and Hibari knew each other from before?

Okay, now _that_ was unexpected.

Not that I'd ever thought that characters could have prior relationships to one another, but two main characters that never really interacted with one another…

It also made sense. Why did Fon choose Hibari, after all? He was an Arcobaleno, he had been very famous, and he probably had many friends who could have come and represented him. But his chose Hibari.

Probably because Fon had realised that no matter how many strings he pulled on short notice, the most he would get would be one or two people – Fon didn't belong to any organisation that I knew of except Arcobaleno – and the only one strong enough, and familiar enough with Namimori's layout was Hibari. Especially if Fon knew Hibari already.

Knew Hibari's strength. Knew his _potential_.

Why, Hibari was quite a mafia prize.

The meeting had gone well though. I rolled onto my side, and bunched up my blanket until it was bunched up in front of me. Hibari had agreed to let me into his party easier than Reborn or I had anticipated (since Hibari is all rawr, bite you to death, I'm a lone wolf) so it didn't actually feel like a confrontation, unlike this afternoon with Tsuna.

Ah, Tsuna.

He would be so shocked to realise I wouldn't be fighting with him. But Tsuna was nice and understanding. Reborn planned to make Tsuna bunch up all the groups anyway, so we would fight on the same side soon.

I closed my eyes with a slight scowl on my face, thinking of all the stupid details that still needed to be fixed.

Next… I focused on the little footsteps outside my room, as they slid into the next room and closed the door softly.

Next was Chrome.

* * *

We had four days – Byakuran and Yuni and Gamma would all come around today or tomorrow, and Tsuna would wake up to find his father at his home today. One day was yesterday, one day was today, and after the weekend would be the first 'battle day'.

Ah, fun times, fun times.

* * *

"Reborn, I won't actually be fighting today," I said to Reborn over the phone. I heard some explosions, and kids laughing as Tsuna and Basil presumably played with the Lambo and I-pin. Reborn himself seemed to be nursing some early morning coffee.

"So you've started already? Fon did join with Hibari?"

"Yup. Leave Chrome to me as well. Hibari will stop Yamamoto and Gokudera from finding Tsuna. You wanted to talk with Iemitsu about an alliance right? But nothing has changed, Reborn. Why do you want the first battle to not change from my prediction?"

"I know Tsuna well. He has to get defeated by Iemitsu. He still sees Iemitsu as his useless father."

"Is there no other way?"

"His way will be clearer if he faces the hardship now."

"You just want to prove that Tsuna got a bit big-headed didn't you?"

"…"

"Well, I guess you know what you're doing. We both want Tsuna to become confident, not big-headed. And well, Hibari would benefit from this as well, you know? So it's all good. I just feel guilty for manipulating everyone."

"…Don't hesitate. All plans have weaknesses."

"That's very true. I'll be waiting outside instead. You sure Dino knows not to rush into the school until Tsuna gets knocked out?"

"I don't doubt you to do your side, so don't doubt me."

I heard the sound of Tsuna groaning in the background, and him yelling at Lambo at… something to do with I-pin's braid. I inwardly sighed in my head – I hope he wasn't pulling it _again_. Had I remembered to tell him that the way to get a girl's attention is to _not_ bully her? If I did, I should probably tell him again, the brat. I was startled into attention when Reborn spoke again.

"Did you say something to Tsuna?"

"Yeah, kind of. Why?"

"He didn't cower in front of Xanxus as much as I thought he would."

"Big head, or confidence?"

I could see Reborn's smirk on the other end.

"What did you say?"

"I don't know. I said a lot of things," I said, wanting to change the subject. "See you tomorrow. I hope by then you've stolen Skull's watches, Reborn."

There was a smirk in the reply.

"I am the best Hitman."

Then Nana called breakfast, and Reborn dropped the phone like it was a hot potato. I set down my own side of the phone, grinning up at Grey because he gave me perfectly toasted crumpets with peanut butter and condensed milk, damn it. Gah, he was such a good grandpa!

(Actually, no, if he was my grandpa I would probably be disciplined and whatnot. But hey, Grey's crumpets were the best! And are those hash browns I see in his hands?)

Grey set them down on the table with a smile in his blue eyes.

"You've seemed a bit stressed lately, Miss. I thought you would like a treat."

I stood up and hugged Grey tightly, revelling in his grandpa-ness that had been with me nearly four years now.

"Thank you, Grey."

The smile lingered in his voice when he gently looped an arm around me for a brief hug, before pushing me into the chair. I sat down with a soft flump, and blinked in surprise at the few pieces of broccoli on my plate. Grey was always trying to make me eat healthy.

"No problem, Miss."

He walked back into the kitchen, and I saw Chrome lingering in the hallway. I smiled and beckoned her to join me, and we ate happily together, although Chrome ate a lot more fruit that I ever would for breakfast. I worried a little to see her coughing and slipping on a mask though.

* * *

Tsuna approached me in class. It seemed like he put our conversation those few days ago aside. I was grateful.

"Alice! I couldn't get a hold of you yesterday, but did you know of the matches for Reborn's curse?" Tsuna asked, and I just gave him a bemused smirk that a boy (Matsuwa) who was trying to sneak a bracelet in my bag took a picture at. I scowled immediately, and Tsuna laughed with Matsuwa who took the picture, even asking him for a copy. Matsuwa just gave Tsuna a short clap on the back, and it was I who was left with a pleasant feeling of warmth at the display. Maybe I would forgive Matsuwa this once.

"Do you think I wouldn't?" I raised an eyebrow.

Tsuna gave a nervous giggle. "Well, your watch is with Reborn because he didn't let me bring it to school."

I shook my head. "Sorry Tsuna, but this time I'm not on your team."

Tsuna's eyes widened, and the silence was long enough for me to get worried.

"Alice?" He asked, his voice small and Dame-Tsuna-ish again. "Is it because of what I said before?"

I stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, before grumbling under my breath. Turning away from him, I rested my head on the wall for a moment. I could hear Tsuna's fidgeting.

Okay. I should get this over before Gokudera came back from his lunch run or I would probably get exploded.

"No, Tsuna. Reborn just thought that maybe, if I join another team, then you were sure to have an alliance with another strong fighter, that's all."

Tsuna breathed out a little, before giving me a contemplative look.

"So Reborn knew about it?"

I nodded. He ran his hand through his head. "That damn Reborn, why didn't he tell me?"

"Aren't you angry at me?" I asked curiously, my fingers unwittingly playing with a piece of paper underneath the table. In the silence where Tsuna looked at me like I had looked at him when he asked me if I still begrudged him for saying his thoughts out, I realised that the window was open. The Sakura would bloom soon. It would be another school year after that.

"N-n-no, Alice! Why would I be angry at you? I'm just disappointed because you've always been by my side, and well, we've always fought on the same side. Just thinking that maybe you might need to fight us makes me nervous!" He gave a nervous grin, scratching the back of his head. I shook my head in a silent laugh.

"Don't worry. In the end, we will all fight for the same side."

Tsuna tilted his head in confusion when the door was slammed open.

"Juudaime!" Gokudera's cheerful voice rang out across the room. Tsuna melted into a puddle of embarrassed goo, and I laughed on the side as usual. "I'm back with some extra cake! Do you want some?"

Yamamoto laughed from the corner where he had been talking with his other friends, extracting himself and walking towards Tsuna's table.

"If you don't want it, Tsuna, can I eat it?" He said with good humour as he dragged a chair to sit on the side. Gokudera stole another chair, Tsuna sat in his original chair as I walked over with him to sit at the empty side. Scanning around for a chair, I just settled to use Kyoko's one.

"Of course not, you baseball idiot!" Gokudera exploded as his actions belied his words, opening his bag up with obvious happiness and excitement. Gokudera had always liked his store-bought bento boxes.

"Haha, don't be like that, Gokudera!" Yamamoto said happily, opening his own lunch box. Sushi. As usual.

"Hiie!" Tsuna blushed as he stared at his own love-love lunchbox made by Nana. I was not joking, it had hearts and pink scribbles and the words 'LOVE LOVE BENTO' over the rice. I gave a wry grin, Gokudera loudly proclaimed the excellence of Juudaime's lunchbox while Yamamoto laughed in amusement on the side. Tsuna groaned, as some people peered over his shoulder to look at the wonderful lunchbox and snickered. Which ignited Gokudera's indignant fury, of course.

I ignored them all and opened my own box. Mine were some dinner leftovers from yesterday, after I had been concerned with how much Grey worked and just insisted to eat leftovers for lunch at school. He'd not been happy, but hey, I liked leftovers as much as they were first cooked.

Happily munching on my salmon, I noticed a commotion outside in the courtyard. Seeing that no-one was paying attention to me (to his eternal embarrassment, Tsuna's lunchbox was of the utmost interest, apparently) I looked out the window.

Kyoko and Chrome were eating lunch together, and Hana was walking away to put trash in the bin, presumably. Everyone's smiles, except Chrome's, were strained. And that was only because Chrome was reading her medical books.

Hmm… I wonder how long that would last. I hoped until after all this 'removal of curse' arc was complete. That way, it was easier to focus and solve the problem. There was too much at stake to try and help _now_.

I sighed.

When the end of lunch sounded, Gokudera ushered us away from Tsuna's desk (as usual) and I used the time to call Yamamoto over.

"In the battle, after you meet Hibari, direct Gokudera towards the pool area."

Yamamoto's eyes were clearly confused, but he nodded, and I trusted him to do it because he trusted me.

It wouldn't have been hard to find Tsuna after an explosion like what he made when he got punched by Iemitsu – most illusions only covered the visual aspect, no matter how skilled the CEDEF illusionists were. Tsuna and Iemitsu had their showdown in this classroom, for heaven's sake. In the manga, Yamamoto and Gokudera had apparently 'ran around the whole school' and still didn't find Tsuna.

Well, now I just made sure of that.

* * *

Fon came up to me with a watch, a curious gleam in his eyes as he politely offered it to me while I was leaving the school.

"Hibari said you were on his team with him," he said calmly, as if it was the weather he was talking about.

"Yes, but keep me secret, okay?" I said as I put on the watch. "I'm not going to fight this first battle. Don't worry," I immediately said to assuage Fon's fears. "He won't lose. He'll just… get a bit angry, maybe. I'll make sure to join the second one."

"You have another agenda, don't you? That's why Hibari doesn't mind crowding with you on his team."

"Yes. But don't worry," I said again. "This will lead to the best outcome."

_Hopefully._

_Best?_ Fon's eyes asked. Richie on his head gave a small leap, the little monkey running down from Fon's head to curl around his neck.

"You'll see."

"No matter what, you won't betray this team?"

"No."

Then Fon smiled. "It is nice to work with you, Brighteye-san. It is reassuring to have one such as you on my team."

"Oh no, I'm nothing special."

The dubious glance he gave me as he leapt away towards Namimori's reception room told me all I needed about his opinion on _that_.

* * *

"Chrome, you need to walk back home today," I said to her, as I leaned out the window of the car. Chrome's eyes were wide and unsure. "Mukuro would want to catch you alone."

"Mukuro-sama?" She asked through her mask, as she coughed weakly again. She sounded really happy just then, before she coughed.

I frowned in worry.

"Yes. But I'll put all your books and bags in the car, okay?"

She nodded, meek as she started walking. Grey drove away, and I felt kind of like a jerk but…

It was worth it when Chrome came back with a smile on her face, even if it was a mite bit confused and worried. She stepped quietly inside, putting her shoes neatly into the shoe rack and walked over to me, looking out the window next to me, distracted.

"Mukuro-sama said I might die…"

Chrome's organs from Mukuro. Her body and psyche had started rejecting the ones he had made for her because she wanted to stand up to equal standing to Mukuro, and not only his liability, only his puppet for him to swap bodies with. It was commendable that she had the will to do so… but now she realised it could have fatal effects. Her body, without organs, would die within two minutes.

"Because of your organs, yes." I nodded, and sat her down. She stared at the cup of hot chocolate that Grey had given her just then, thanking him politely before settling down more comfortably on the cushions on the couch. The large television was blaring, so I put it switched the volume down even as I watched Chrome and the window.

The sun was setting. The fight had been announced over just a few minutes ago.

"Alice-san… I mean, Alice," she amended quickly, "do you… do you fear dying?"

The air-conditioning kicked in, spewing refreshing fake air over us. I pulled a face, and sprawled out on the couch, watching the mini people on the screen yell silently at one another. It was one of those bad romantic dramas, where there was a love dodecagon without all the literary genius of a bad romance novel. I switched it off.

The silence was a bit too prominent.

I switched it on again, but changed the channel. A rhinoceros slowly paved its way across the lake, ripples spreading out as far as the camera could see. The blue sky crinkled into waves.

"Alice?" Chrome tentatively asked again.

I closed my eyes.

"Maybe once, I was scared."

"Maybe?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'd never had the time to be scared."

I smirked to myself. Fatal car crashes tended to be like that.

"But if you did? If you knew that maybe, in a few days, you would die…" _Like me?_ was implied.

"If you knew that you would die in a year, what would you do, Chrome?" A question to answer a question. Chrome looked up at me with wide eyes. "Would you be scared the whole year, cry that you don't know what's after death, be depressed because it wasn't fair and you didn't do anything wrong in your life?"

Chrome just stared at me, the sunset reflected in her eyes.

"Or would you try to be happy, even if it's hard to wake up knowing you were one day closer to dying? Would you try and comfort the people around you, even if you felt like they should be comforting you, because you realised they were sad because they were afraid for _you_? That they were afraid for you because they cared for _you,_ and they themselves didn't know what was after death?"

"Mukuro-sama…" Chrome murmured under her breath.

I nodded; my face was unwilling to give a smile.

"He's worried for you, isn't he?"

Chrome looked at me, her lower face still in that stupid mask. No wonder she wasn't drinking any chocolate. I reached up to pull it down, and motioned for her to drink. Hot chocolate cold wasn't _hot_ chocolate anymore, right?

"Once you realise that there are people who care for you, who love you, it becomes easier to wake up every day. To face the world, because in that day, the people who love you are going to be there. Even if it's the hardest thing to be happy, even if it's easier to hurl abuse at the world, when you realise it's going to hurt the days that you can be with your loved ones… It's easier to be grateful that you had realised their significance in your life before you die because there are so many who are taken away from life who'd never had the chance. The choice between happiness and sadness becomes less of a chore, and more of a blessing and…"

Her hand was shaking. A sad smile pulled at my lips. I sat up to pull the hot chocolate out of her hand, and hugged her. Wetness seeped into my shoulder.

"It becomes easier after that, right?" I asked.

Chrome gave a small nod.

"So, for your loved ones, you're going to fight your hardest, right?"

She nodded.

"Did you read your medical books?" I didn't wait for an answer. "You are a strong illusionist yourself, but you lacked the knowledge to create your own organs. I know you still might not know enough of some intricate functions of them, but you could make ones were you can at least survive if you're cut off from Mukuro's power…

She pulled back from me, her eyes wide. "You did all that for me because…"

"I had suspicions, yes," I nodded. "So don't be afraid anymore, okay? Because you," I gripped her shoulders tightly in my hands and stared directly into her eyes. "You are _going to live_."

Chrome didn't say anything after that, only hugged me tightly before settling down and holding her hot chocolate again, and we watched birds fly over and African horizon.

"Chrome, do you trust me?" I asked, my voice soft.

"I do, Alice."

"Then can you do something for me?"

"Anything."

* * *

Reborn rung me the next morning.

"The plan was successful. I have gotten the watches and replaced them with fake ones. The Shimon family are no longer part of Skull's representatives, and the only watch left is on Skull himself. Chrome's illusions are strong enough to hold for another few hours – Bermuda is coming."

I let out a hiss.

"Just as expected. Earlier than my prediction."

"He has been watching this battle closely, especially me. He's going to target Shimon, and Skull is the only one who probably wouldn't die. Bermuda will realise the watches and the Shimon family are illusions soon enough, and come for us."

"Are you ready?"

"The Shimon family are safely hidden until the right time. They have agreed to our conditions."

"Tsuna still suspects nothing?"

"Yes."

"When will he reach us from Italy?"

"One more day – today's fight, and then the day after next he would have stolen the watch off Skull. He would probably need half a day before realising it was me." He smirked. "I would be the only one to do this."

"Chrome can hold out for another two days – I'm concerned though, so…"

"That idiot Skull hasn't noticed anything wrong yet. She can vanish them when they get to school."

"Okay."

"…Do not back out now. This was our plan. Tsuna seems to be getting ready – I will show him my true form soon."

"I'm not hesitating. The plan is just going… too well."

"We will just only need to be prepared."

"Where are the watches? This is a secured line."

"Underneath Tsuna's bed."

"…"

* * *

**Well! Here it is! After a long long time!**

**Thank you for all your kind reviews! I hope this was up to standard. Lots of plot, very little action, but I hope this is enough for you all. Thank you for waiting this long! (Thank you! Thank you! and if you're a little annoyed I can give you some, err… cookies? Chocolate ones?)**

**I'm glad it is 8000 words as promised, haha! And hey, I'm telling you all now – I have major major tests in about two weeks, and those tests last for two weeks. Please be understanding! I hope you all can wait for a month for my next update? XD**

**I'm wishing this can all tide you over! Now I have to write an English essay right away (I have to finish it by tonight) and I didn't end it on an absolutely horrible cliffhanger this time just so it's easier on the readers. Haha, I hope you all have a happy month, and please review to tell me what you think! Or suggestions! Or anything, really, even a hello, haha. I'm really glad that the last extra had such a lovely response – I didn't mean for anyone to cry, but I'm happy because that means you all care for Alice. **

**^^ Happy days, you all!**


	64. It begins (version 2)

**This is version 2.0 because I wasn't happy with the first version. This is longer, and this has plot development and less monologue. If you want to read it, I hope it's still interesting. Skip the letters though – they're still the same! Everything else is more or less a little different, but there's some major changes at the end of the chapter in Tsuna's fight (but I still had to make it stick somewhat to manga, so sorry) **

**AND OMG SO EXCITED THAT MY EXAMS ARE OVER**

**The rest of my reasons are at the end. XD Thanks for reading it again guys! If you don't want to… TT_TT I'm sorry. **

**AND I ACTUALLY FINISHED IT ON SUNDAY, BUT THE SERVER WON'T LET ME ACCESS MY ACCOUNT. WTHELL, FANFICTION?**

* * *

[Alice's Brighteye – Number Fifty – Letter to you know who]

_Letter number eleven_

_Wend, seriously? You were a freaking samurai before you came to this world? That is like the awesomest thing I've heard since I found out Hibari has a fluffy sheep pillow! I heard from Alayne that she came from this Alfasombra place where there were tonnes of medicals and everyone got murdered. I don't think I want to live in a place like that. It's so interesting to consider the worlds out there. Mine was quite normal, if you count nuclear warfare and all that political peace talking stuff._

_I'm actually surprised there's actually no nuclear stuff in so many worlds. Does that mean Earth was military bent? I mean, nuclear technology could be used for medic purposes as well. And a whole lot of other stuff. The possibilities!_

_And since I'm not sure that Anise isn't actually reading these letters… (if you are, go away. You have tonnes of work to do anyway)._

_Err… I was the older of two siblings, one of which was Jack who has grown into this handsome glasses pretty boy now, and my cute darling Emily who is ten. She was three when I died though, just saying. Although nowadays, since there's so much happening, I can't remember their faces really that clearly. Or mom's. Or dad's. Grandmama's is just this wrinkly old blotch that feels mildly comfortable. Not that I really know how a memory can be comfortable, but still._

_I thought that Bill promised our minds wouldn't grow up, but Bill is a bit vague on a lot of things. Maybe he just meant that we can't surpass our boundaries? I thought that meant I wouldn't forget, but obviously not._

_Anyway, I just sometimes feel sad that I can't even remember the faces of the people dearest to me, and who I've been fighting for. I'll just have to look forward to Heaven, won't I? It would be a nice thing to rest. I bet you understand that way more than I do too. But now that I've been fighting for so long, I feel like I can't give up now. If I give up, I'm just spitting on all my efforts from before, all my realisations and friend's lives. So even if you're just going to say 'have you really thought it through?' I'll say even if I haven't, I'm going to continue fighting for them. This is much more their story than mine. Does this answer your question from last time?_

_So I'm going to ask yet again (what, this is the seventh time?), can I ask why you've done all that stuff during your wandering years? I can't say I understand, but at least you can give yourself some leeway. Wend, no matter what, you're not alone._

_Even though I am going to leave in around another a month and a half or so (what did you say, that if I was unlucky it was only four weeks?). Maybe I could bring your case up to some Angel somewhere._

_Believe me, please? I may, to your hypothesis, be some kind of version of your friend Qin, but I'm not her. I am Alice, who is, and has been, a hopelessly lost teenager for the past seven years. All of us Brighteyes understand the pain of uprooting, but still. I'm not asking you to tell them. Tell me._

_Oh, and you have any input on why Reborn seemed to accept my stories so easily? I thought it would be a bit more… difficult._

_Alice_

* * *

_Alice,_

_Yes, I was a samurai when I was younger. Those skills helped a lot in my sword-training, though I have given up most combat abilities from my immortality. It is a shame, now that I think back on it, as I now remember how I loved doing my early morning katas while the sun was rising behind me. Sometimes I did them on the roof for some extra thrill. I wonder why I could not remember this before._  
_Alayne lived a hard life, but that also does not excuse her for many of the things she did, like how my actions cannot be rectified in many forms._  
_Anise indeed is reading these letters. Maybe you can persuade a friend of yours to ask her not to? I am currently not a danger after all. There is such strict security guarding this place._  
_Memory is a construct of the mind, and new memories may come over old ones. The more recent, the easier to access as the neurons have been active more recently. This is the simplest way to explain – our brains may not be the same, and may have less capability to change but just as we can bleed, but not die, our memories can change, but only slower. Think of ourselves as a virus. We adapt to the world, mutate to change it, but as we do not truly belong sometimes we are burnt out. We disappear._  
_Elena is my little sister. What can I say, but that she was annoying and hot-headed? She was spoilt, but she was mine to take care of. Our family came from a distinguished family of samurai, but we had enemies. I never saw her grow up. The last time I saw her she was screaming and terrified as she reached out for me over a vassal's shoulder. He carried her away on my order, as I faced our attackers. I didn't know if she was alive or not, and I just wished I could go to Heaven right then to watch over her._  
_And then I saw her happy, and her face alive again. I felt full of hope. Now, I cannot even remember her face anymore. There is always a point of 'no return'. All Brighteyes step over it after they live in this life for more than a month, a day even. We have to do our job, or we spend eternity in agony. What greater motivation, what greater soldiers can you want than ones who do not fear death?_  
_I am well aware you are not Qin._  
_I do not want to tell you, but I may give you a hint. After seeing only the bad side of society for three-hundred years, how would you feel?_  
_The Arcobaleno always have had a special affinity with Brighteyes. That is how we came to have the sympathies of Bermuda. All Brighteyes, like Arcobaleno, are older than they seem. We can see this within other people, can understand the pain of not being distinguished or taken seriously for the mere fact of appearance._  
_Do you like potatoes?_  
_Wend_

* * *

During the short nap I was trying to snatch during the drive to Yuni's house (Reborn, the stupid baby, insisted that I should greet Yuni. It wasn't as if I especially needed to – I got her phone number from some random operative on the Brighteye network. But no, Reborn and his stupid cute baby cheeks holding those stupid explosives forced me into this absolutely _stupid_ early morning trip), I was having an existential crisis.

No, Grey, don't look at me like that. I think this is way overdue. I know hitting my head on the window doesn't solve anything.

But yes, my existential crisis.

This was, of course, after my wonderful Grey-cooked breakfast containing some hashbrowns (oh Grey is such an awesome super butler), dodging some well-intentioned rich people on the elevator, and driving up to the scenic mountains near Namimori.

Just as I was appreciating the approaching sunrise, I had this major shock moment.

The kind of moment that entailed something like '_Oh my Heaven, I actually did what I thought I did. This is the reality. I'm going to see Yuni, who was always sending me pity looks, which always meant that something horrible happened in the future, which means that I just might have lead everyone to their doom' _type of moment.

There was nothing for it. I attributed it to restressing myself.

Instead of just worrying about _Tsuna_ and his death-defying acts and then adding the stress of his (my) friends into the equation, now I just burdened myself with changing the future, a.k.a messing things up a.k.a maybe not getting to Heaven and screwing everyone over.

Wow, real smart, me. I should earn a prize.

Frantically grasping for the refreshments that Grey always packs, I managed to find some lemon tea and started to chug it down, before a large bump on the road made me choke and start coughing.

I wiped my mouth, even as Grey slowed down the car to look at me with some concern. I tried waving it off, my mind going through all these different tangents at once. While spitting sugary tea everywhere.

I winced at the mess.

_Sorry Grey.  
Mental note: hire someone to clean the car._

The road was becoming less tarmac and more dirt and rocks and dark, from all the trees. Trying to wipe the mess and squinting out the window, I wondered how Grey could see where to go with only two headlights. He didn't have glow in the dark eyes, from the last time I heard.

Just as I was starting to relax, this bird dive-bombed the windscreen of the car and made me, uh, kind of freak out.

I could only say this in my defense. I had absolutely zilch sleep.

It was kind of more, something like relief in telling Reborn about the future. I was perfectly psyched up about it, I was no bystander anymore. I was going to take a stand, and fight for my friends for once. Just like Tsuna, for us, so many times.

I felt useful.

And then my bad habit of thinking too much caught up with me. I had gotten some of the best nights of sleep after my revelation with Reborn.

Then it got progressively less. Like some math equation that Bill threw at me, just to keep me on my toes.

_Alice's sleepy time equation – minus two hours every night after trying to screw with my plot!_

I blinked off the random image of Bill floating around shoving chalkboards at people's faces and shook my head.

Damn, I was clearly more tired than I thought.

Let me elucidate some of my major concerns in doing some of my world-saving plotting. First were the changes.

Oh so many changes. My _existence_ was practically a crime, now that I think about it.

It hit me when I was rereading the manga, and watching some sneaky (if I do say so myself) anime without getting caught by Grey, in the dead of night because of insomnia.

I laughed at all the incredibly funny scenes, wondered where all the background music went when we were living it, found all the character's thoughts especially hilarious (or sad, because sometime's Tsuna's thoughts hit home way too much for my liking) and fuelled increasing panic when I realised…

How out of character they were.

Yes.

The characters I watched in the series, and the people I've met were _out of character._

I may, or may not, have had a type of… midnight binge on my secret stash of hashbrowns.

Oh no, they were essentially the same people. To be honest, Reborn is exactly as he is portrayed, a cute, cursed, manipulative, pyromaniac who slowly gets closer and closer to Tsuna so much that he can't leave. He cares so much for Tsuna that he eventually cares for his friends. Yamamoto, and to a lesser extent, Gokudera.

Lambo seemed to be the same. A brat, no manners, ate like a cow, didn't respect anyone. I like to think some of my teachings stuck to him though. It would be nice. He still drank milk from the carton, the kid. Though he did act strangely insightful at times.

Same with Dino, Romario. Kusakabe, Lal, Colonello, Giovanni, Nana. Bianchi, I-pin, Fuuta. Xanxus, Squalo, Mammon…

Maybe though, maybe it's because I'm not too close to them, so I can't see it. Those little personality quirks that appear in the manga that makes my breath hitch, makes me read over it again and say "that's not it. That's not what he would do."

Hibari stalks around less like a peacock and a little more hunched villain, Mukuro's laugh is just a touch lower. Ryohei is actually that much of a blockhead but the manga never went into the hours that he put, day after day, in his boxing club. Encouraging his _kouhai_, being the loving brother to all of them. All of us. He and Yamamoto were the sporting jocks in our group, laughing and connecting over their love for their sport. Ryohei was the one who glared off the delinquents that would have continued bullying Tsuna anyway.

Gokudera's creepiness. Oh his fanaticism was one of the things that made me laugh. Tsuna's reactions are _gold_.

Anyway, Gokudera (and everyone actually, now that I thought about it) never got much character development later in the series. Always the 'I'm the right-hand man!' stalker that Tsuna cringed away from in public.

And he's actually like that. Yeah, he actually snaps pictures of Tsuna, and hides them in a 'porn stash' underneath his bed (he would be such a good spy if he ever wanted to be), but the anime never focused on the important aspects. How Tsuna was the one who he thinks 'saved' him, how he is overcompensating because he wants to run away from his past to become a Good Person worthy of His-Most-Wonderful-And-Kind-Juudaime.

How, behind his '_I'm Juudaime's right hand man after all sparkle sparkle grin grin'_ he's painfully paranoid, and is so scared it isn't even funny. And how much Tsuna, Yamamoto and I guess now, me, matter to him.

Yamamoto's hair is longer. And he loves his old man, the sushi shop, baseball, and his friends so much he's willing to sacrifice a perfect career – a professional baseball star, a sushi chef, a businessman, a social worker, a kendo master – for mafia, fighting, death. So insightful (more than me) and sometimes more mature than me.

Which says something I think, about me or him, as I was sixteen when they were eight.

So many little things. So many skipped memories.

Kyoko and I stealing from Hana's chips, Tsuna fleeing down the hallway from Hibari, a (for once) peaceful Gokudera reading beside Yamamoto in the library for midterm tests.

Are they worth it?

Heck, yes.

Did that stop the doubt?

Grey pulled to a stop in front of a large mansion that appeared from apparently _nowhere_ (and I suspect illusions being used) in the woods, stepped out, noted my especially sombre air that appeared when I thought too much and just gave me a change of clothes which I blinked wonderingly at.

I threw him a hug, and quickly changed out of my tea sodden clothes in the back before stepping out and scowling at the sun, which _still hadn't risen yet._

Which reminded me of Reborn, and then my insomnia, and then my reading, and then _memories memories memories…_

I stopped short, and quietly grimaced an apology at Grey, who kind of giving this look of 'why is Miss so clumsy with drinks in the car'. Scuffing my shoes against the dirt track, I started walking towards the mansion, which was still quite a ways away.

Great, more distance for thinking.

And sure enough, the question that kept echoing back was

_Did that stop the doubt?_

The answer was as clear as it was for the first question.

No. Never. No matter how much I trusted them.

And sadly, I think it would never stop.

* * *

"Yo, Byakuran. Nice to meet you again, even though we kind of just met because of time travel and we were kind of mortal enemies and kind of obliterated you," I greeted with a lackadaisical air, examining the mountain line for that hint of the dawn I _knew_ would come in… another minute or so. Yeah.

Byakuran gave me a welcoming beam of a smile.

"Hello! You're that girl that Belle was friends with, but had to kill dozens of times!"

I laughed pleasantly, flapping a hand to wave off his friendly comment.

"Oh, Byakuran, I love your tact!"

We laughed pleasantly for awhile before Byakuran's eyes sharpened, and he held out a hand with a Ring clearly gleaming on it. I dropped my smile back to my tired, deadpan one.

"Why are you here? You're clearly Reborn's representative, and anyone's representative is the Princess's…"

"Enemy?" I filled in helpfully, making a show of removing my Vongola Ring off my left hand and putting it on a chain around my neck, putting it on top of my shirt for show. It hung heavily around my neck, as Byakuran tilted his head, smile never dropping (which was so creepy). "I'm not Reborn's representative, and I kind of expected you to know that."

Byakuran was visibly taken aback. His smile actually flickered, and I gave myself inner kudo points.

"Then the battler watch?"

I gave him a sharp smile. "Fon."

And Byakuran suddenly had this 'oh so everything makes sense now ohohoho this is going to so _interesting_ look' that made me instantly defensive.

"What?" I asked, shifting a little.

"It was obvious Fon was going to choose Hibari. Everyone was surprised at how Fon had managed to find two representatives, because everyone knew that Hibari had no one strong enough to battle with him if the Vongola was with Reborn."

_Which is given really,_ we both completed in the silence, and I think Byakuran already drew a conclusion as to why the Brighteye (a valuable asset and a close friend/fighter of the Vongola Juudaime) would be 'given' to Fon.

We were all going around making alliances – why not plant a member for instant acceptance? The rules just stated you needed to battle – nothing about members swapping teams. I could change back as easily as swapping watches.

Let him make his own wrong assumptions. Byakuran's concerns didn't concern Tsuna's safety.

"So little Brighteye is here to talk to the Princess."

"And considering Yuni's powers, I bet she already knows I'll come today," I continued, looking past him towards the Mansion door. It was still hard to see in the gloom (and considering the time, I was surprised Byakuran was actually awake really).

"Yeah, if she's awake," I shrugged, glancing behind him to see if Yuni had burst out of the doors yet. She's still a kid though – five at most, so probably not. "I can wait until she comes out to me, if that would calm your mothering tendencies."

Byakuran grinned, scratching his head disarmingly (and even if he looked stupid and dazed while doing it, it didn't mean I was going to fall for such an obvious misdirection) before remarking about how as the cool, hard-hearted Mafioso that he was, he would never do something as inane and cuddly as _mothering_. Dear Heaven, what things have you been smoking, Alice?

"Nothing really, just that it's perfectly understandable since Yuni saved you from eternal loneliness, you would feel just as eternally indebted to her, therefore having your total loyalty. Which kind of means that you would mother."

I gave him a bored glance, noting that he was defensive again, though his smile didn't falter this time. Damn.

"You look like the smothering type."

Byakuran coughed, before forcing out quite a robust laugh.

"Most people tell me I'm easy going though, little _Brighteye~"_

"Sure, sure," I nodded brainlessly (I'd perfected the art from years of annoying Gokudera), "delude yourself." When Byakuran's smile dropped a little, from shock or otherwise I will never know, I gave him a compassionate smile and winged it. I'd been spontaneous the past week, why not now?

"There's no shame in loving another person before yourself, Byakuran."

He blinked at me.

"How… how interesting."

"What?"

My whole demeanour turned to 'ineffectual' while I reviewed what I just said. No really, what sparked that reaction?

"You… you are just like me."

At the serious note in his voice, and the _statement _he made, I raised an eyebrow. What, from the comment I just said, just implied I was a power-hungry, world-dominating, marshmallow loving (hashbrowns were obviously so much better) super-powered shounen antagonist?

"And Rokudo Mukuro," he added, analysing me against… what?

Dude, both Mukuro and Byakuran were power-hungry and had dreams of world domination which were stopped by Tsuna playing hero. All _I_ ever wanted was just normal, lovely peace with Tsuna safe and happy with a successful school life. How the hell…?

"You're older than you look."

I widened my eyes, involuntary action as I instinctually took a step back. Byakuran's smile turned fairly vicious, taking my actions as agreement. Which they were.

Shoot, why did everyone figure out things about me _at the worst possible time?_

"How are you like me, Byakuran?"

He gave a snort, eyes looking over at the mountains to our side. The sun was finally rising, sky lightening so that Byakuran's hair started looking white instead of murky, shaded grey.

"Imagine, Alice. I experience all my selves, and all my selves brought all the major worlds into my desired utopia. Then I floated in that eternity as all my selves amalgamated from the lack of purpose before the Princess found me. Tell me how old I am."

"Older than dinosaurs."

Byakuran grinned.

"That's about right~"

"Mukuro?"

"He is a reincarnated soul, on a quest to find his key to his peace. He's gone through all types of worlds you know."

Oh… my gosh. _This_ was not covered in the manga, nor anime. Mukuro wasn't kidding when he said…

"The numbers in his eyes. They were actually acquired through living and gaining their powers for himself. This makes so much sense."

I remembered his words from our first meeting, his weird references to death, and how the Angelic system worked. How there were…

"Failures."

Mukuro was a failure. He was thrown into a loophole, or maybe he had a clash somewhere, somehow, like how I had to face Belle, and how Belle had to suffer through years and years of futility. Mukuro had always been strangely bitter about Bill (Bill's charge? Or some other Angel?), and he had always been more accommodating to me. Always helping me, even if he didn't need to, knew he was fine.

A key. Maybe Mukuro's Trial was to find a key, of some sort before he failed. Or maybe the key only came into play after you failed, so that you could gain entrance to Heaven if he found it?

But Mukuro!

Unlike me, Mukuro had killed hundreds of people, and he will continue to kill more. No qualms about killing, no hesitation. A doomed existence like Wend?

No, Wend had no meaning. Had no purpose. Mukuro had one.

Think! Key.

Key to peace. I knew it. I think he'd given me hints to his purpose, or maybe some clue through his interactions with me. But I couldn't trawl through my memory now, no time, never _is_ any time…

Wend.

Wend would probably know.

Mukuro had always alluded to 'me being Wend's salvation' and that sort of strange crap, but how would he know if they didn't already share some information? I had to remember to ask Wend in a letter later today—

A little, kind of nasal, laugh interrupted my thoughts.

"Failures?" Byakuran asked, eyes intensely interested.

Huh? How did he… oh, I muttered it out loud. Damn, vocal chords. You traitors. Byakuran had never died, he would never know the reasons Mukuro and I were… the way we were.

"As in experiments? Scientific experiments, failures? Mukuro was subject to the Estraneo, but you, dear Alice, should have had prime environments in growing up. Unless—"

I shut that thought down before it even finished.

"No, the Brighteyes do not torture, nor scientifically experiment on anyone, much less our members. Due to some member's disgust at the Estraneo, how the whole mafia knew about their disgusting acts were partly due to my family's actions."

Byakuran was still curious, but his voice went back to that normal, mocking tilt.

"Of course. Brighteyes, ever meddling."

I shrugged again, but just made a gesture for Byakuran to continue his train of thought before I interrupted.

"Yes? So you think I'm older than I am?"

"Like me, like Mukuro, but not as much, I think. You still dream."

I snorted.

"No I don't."

"Really?" Byakuran gave a happy little hum, like he had outwitted me. I frowned. "So no deep, driving goal why you want to go on? No big, wonderful revelations about the beauty and complexity of the world?"

I was about to say no, before Byakuran smiled, leaning in. The sun had risen, the light sparkling behind the strands of his now near-translucent hair, his colouring (random thought) reminding me of a marshmallow. White, with purple swirls.

"If you say no, you're lying." He gave this odd, contented smirk, before airily adding on, "for a family that is renown for being all-knowing, you all seem to have the strangest points of denial."

"Nothing is all-knowing," I automatically replied, and Byakuran reacted with a face closest to a pout I've ever seen on a man's face. "But like how I knew of your situation, I also know many things that many won't know." I shot him a look. "Like how you shouldn't sacrifice yourself for Tsuna in tonight's fight," I added cryptically. "After this fight, there will be a stronger opponent than whatever you face tonight, and we, and Yuni, will need you."

I eyed him.

"_Keep the Boss watch intact at all costs_."

Put the plan in motion. Forget… forget about everything that we'd said for analysing later. I'd hinted that I 'knew' the future. In a world full of flames, miraculous boxes and weird powers like I-pin's Pinzu Time bomb, was reading the future such an impressive thing?

Yes. But not impossible.

Now, Byakuran.

Take the bait.

And Byakuran slowly processed my words, the implications sinking into his brain much slowly than I anticipated.

The morning humidity became less oppressive somehow, as the morning light mixed into the mist and dew, making everything around us glow eerily grey.

"The future," Byakuran muttered, his smile actually dropped now.

I waited.

The bait, Byakuran, take the bait.

Loving someone else more than yourself is nothing to be shameful of.

Byakuran looked straight into my eyes.

"What about the Princess's curse?" He asked, oddly still and silent, his purple eyes sharp. Inwardly feeling shame over my own actions – imagining someone throwing me bait about a way to stop Tsuna dying prematurely (like Yuni, the innocent little girl who loves and loves and dies for her efforts) for some greater plan made me angry and helpless all at once. Byakuran would know I would have had a reason for throwing out that information. He knew he was getting manipulated.

I would take the bait without a question, and bear the burden on my shoulders. So without a doubt, I knew Byakuran would do the same.

The role of a protector, after all, was like a house. Take the ever-changing winds and seasons with open arms to kindle the warmth and happiness within. To let the inhabitants know that yes, they were safe, that there was need to worry, because I will, and will always be there for you.

That was why Byakuran was intimidating, why he had followers.

Why so many people were willing to throw away their lives for him.

(Like my friends for me, and me for them. Only I will do it ten-thousand times over so they would never have the need. It wasn't as if, after all, I would be important in the grand scale of things, and if they could have their happiness for even a little longer… I think I would be happy.)

Just like Shouichi said.

'_There was something special about Byakuran-san_,' he had confessed about his friendship with him.

Indeed, indeed.

"If my plan goes right, everyone will be freed."

A crooked eyebrow.

"Everyone? You have grand plans, little Brighteye."

I smirked.

"You had them once too, Byakuran."

He hummed, his mask up and running again as he beamed at me, his whole demeanour excited and happy.

"True!" He hummed, cheerful. "And I guess I shouldn't ask anymore questions, because you aren't going to answer them anyway, are you?"

And before I could even say that even _I_ didn't know what was happening even if it _was_ my life, there was a little girl running across the grass with happy shrieks of 'Alice-nee!'

We both turned, and I ended up giving her a smile that came from the happiness of realising, for real now, that Yuni was happy, and alive right now. No skeleton, no tears, no one-sided love for Gamma.

"Hello, Yuni."

She snuggled deeper into my arms, her hair a little messy from bed and my heart warmed.

I wish everyone could be happy like this, all the time.

I tightened my arms around Yuni, ignoring Byakuran's surprised look at how obviously I was making it apparent I cared for the little girl (stuff emotional deception, Yuni was five).

If I had any say in it, it will be.

"Alice-nee, I missed you!"

* * *

"Princess, have you met _Alice-nee_ before?" Byakuran drawled from behind me, startlingly close. He was following our trek back to the mansion, Yuni's hand in my own as we went to get breakfast.

"Yup. Alice-nee once rescued me from a mafia party. It was so exciting!"

I gave her head an affectionate ruffle, which she only gave a bigger smile at. Since Lambo got annoyed at me when I did that, and I-pin was mostly bald, I felt pretty happy at her reaction.

"Only you would say a midnight tryst was exciting, Yuni."

"You were wearing sunglasses in the dark!"

I coughed.

"Well, yes, but you know about _rich people_ and Brighteyes right?" I gave a shudder. "They're scary!"

She hummed, vaguely reminiscent of Byakuran (oh no, was she starting to imitate Byakuran? That's bad. I didn't want Yuni becoming a marshmallow addict) and smiled at me, pulling me through the door where Gamma was just coming down the stairs. He looked up and saw Yuni and I, and seemed like he was about to greet us before seeing Byakuran slip through the door behind us.

All other things were forgotten when Gamma stormed up to Byakuran, past Yuni (who had been getting ready to give him a sunny good morning) he kind of yelled at Byakuran for getting 'too close to the Princess' without letting Byakuran say anything.

Well, grudges were fine and all (although I'm naturally not a grudgy person) but with Yuni standing there looking a bit crestfallen, I kind of bristled up a bit.

"Gamma," I said, and Gamma turned around to reel back a bit from my _actual_ glare. "You were ignoring Yuni. Get your priorities sorted."

He spluttered, before his face gaining a bit of red from shame. He knelt down in front of Yuni and smiled a calm, gentle smile that, momentarily, reminded me of the calmer, more mature Gamma from the future. This Gamma was more volatile, in a sense, all prickly teenager (kind of like Gokudera).

"It's alright, Gamma. Can I lead Alice-nee to my room before breakfast?"

She turned her big blues into Gamma's face, and I could see the moment that he crumbled.

_Wham, pow, scary mafia dude on the floor. Puppy eyes are scary._

"Okay, but no eating in your room, okay Princess?"

Yuni gave this happy, cheerful smile (which lead to the older teens in the room melt a little) and dragged me up this grand marble staircase, and I waved them goodbye, yelling a 'thanks' to Byakuran for saving Yamamoto in the nick of time.

Byakuran only smiled, a little warmer now, from mutual understanding (loneliness, age, and lies lies lies) and replied offhandedly,

"Without you, I would still be in prison, unable to help the Princess."

So debts were paid and owed, but I found, somehow, greater happiness in not gaining a debt from Byakuran.

Why though, I don't know.

Haven't got time to think these days.

Bah.

I was kind of glad Yuni was leading the way (in retrospect) because for some reason, the two grand marble staircases actually didn't lead to the same corridor. They lead to totally _different wings_ of the mansion.

"Uh, Yuni. Don't let go of my hand, okay?" I said as I looked down a random corridor (that stretched into _infinity, _I swear)

Yuni turned to me and gave me one heck of a dazzling grin. No seriously, the limited light somehow concentrated and shone off her teeth.

I kind of felt blinded. No wonder Byakuran remembered her smile in the future as the only thing that made him feel guilty. It was _that_ bright.

"I'm so glad you're here, Alice-nee."

I blinked in surprise, before smiling and squeezing her hand.

"Me too."

* * *

Yuni nodded at me as she let go of my hand.

"I did realise that for some reason, my visions of the future seem shaky," she told me as she led me to a comfortable room upstairs. It was all baby blues and pinks and whites, and the bed was quite large and cushy. I realised it was Yuni's bedroom when she puttered around, grabbing a little tray of snacks from her desk to bring to the bed. "Gamma always tells me not to eat on the bed, but we can make it an exception this time!"

I grinned and took a cookie before going around and investigating the room, trying to find any bugs, as unlikely as it may be.

"Hey Yuni," I asked, picking up random things from her table and putting them down again, from plush toys to knives to cookies and weird chemicals. "Do you think Byakuran still has a grudge for Tsuna?"

Yuni was watching me from her absolutely humongous bed (not that I have any room to say anything), just following my progress with a happy smile on her face. She tilted her head, visibly replaying the question in her head.

"Grudge?"

I nodded, turning around to face her. Yuni gave a little giggle, before pointing her fingers to her cheeks and tilting them up.

Oh oops. Smiling.

I forced a smile, continuing my sentence.

"Yeah, Tsuna kind of obliterated him in the future, and I _know_ that saved him from eternal imprisonment from boredom and loneliness but that doesn't really encapsulate the consequences of…" I waved my arms around. "Being killed?"

Yuni stopped giggling, and just looked at me.

"Then Alice, do you feel any grudge for Belle?"

Hmm?

"Didn't she kill you? Many, many times for her own sake?"

Oh, well. I didn't think of it that way, before. I mean, I was still standing here, right? But then, a lot of 'me's out there are dead and killed because of her, and apparently… we were friends before too.

"Yuni, I think it's different," I shook my head, taking a seat next to her and immediately sinking into the bed. Yuni shifted to lean against me, and I took comfort in the bony shoulders digging into my ribs. "Belle… Belle was broken afterwards, and in the end, I won. It was obvious that what she did tore what made her personality out, so why would I grudge her for it?"

I shrugged. "Her own actions caused her to kill herself inside. How can I have a grudge on someone that cared for me like that? Tsuna, on the other hand won. He doesn't feel any remorse."

Yuni nodded, that tiny little smile on her face again.

Okay. I confess.

Sometimes, I felt immeasurably young next to Yuni. Here I am, asking a _five-year-old_ for advice. And she was giving it.

"Byakuran and you aren't so dissimilar, Alice," Yuni said instead, twirling a piece of hair around her finger. "He is a much kinder soul than you think, for only someone who cares would go to such great lengths to change the world. He… just went into a wrong turn somewhere. It's okay. It's human. We make mistakes, and Byakuran now is trying his best to atone for something that now he realises he went about the wrong way."

That got a wry smile from me.

"Second chances, huh?"

Yuni gave me a sunny beam.

"Yup!"

"So is she here now?" I asked, with a little piece of blooming hope.

I mean, Bluebell, Zakuro, Kikyo were all here. I've always thought, from that moment she ranted at me in the forest, that maybe if we met back in the past we could sit and talk. Drink some Jasmine tea, eat some hashbrowns. Get some closure so that I could see her happy. I don't think I've ever seen her happy.

Yuni shook her head, face sad.

"No, the moment she disappeared and got defeated, she ceased to exist in all futures."

I smothered the disappointment.

"Oh, okay then. Hey, Yuni, do you know that Tsuna's team will come for an alliance with you later on?"

"Yup, I knew that! But, Tsuna's team, Alice?"

"I'm in Fon's group." I showed her the battle watch, and her eyes widened with understanding.

"Oh, so that's who the second member of Fon's group was! I had a premonition, but I wasn't sure, exactly, because you're always on Tsuna's side one way or another, Alice-nee. So it gets really confusing with you."

I gave a smile.

"Really?"

Yuni gave me a nod full of conviction.

"Yup."

I laughed.

"Everyone has kind of the same reaction as you. Thinking that I would be on Reborn's team with Tsuna, I mean."

Yuni sat up and gave a happy little jump on the bedspread, making it wrinkle into some kind of pink, cottony three-dimensional map.

"Tsuna has that effect on people."

Indeed. And Tsuna thought he was _normal._

"But do you know why I'm on Fon's team though?" I asked, giving Yuni a little hair-ruffle, because bed-hair on Yuni was absolutely adorable.

"I don't know why," Yuni responded, "but my premonitions have been a bit shaky lately. I was thinking that something changed in the future that shouldn't have, or maybe it was the…"

"Bermuda?" I finished, inwardly wincing at what she said. It could _easily_ be me changing things that made the future shaky to Yuni.

She nodded.

" You knew about Bermuda even when the battle first started, right?"

"Right."

"He's going to target Skull and heavily injure his whole family, shoot through Skull's head, and steal their watches to participate in the battle after this one."

Yuni's eyes widened, her hands stilling. Oh, she was so _small_. I didn't want to tell her this stuff. She had this air about her that made you want to protect that innocence and belief that 'everything in this world always has something good about it' that was apparent in every action of hers.

"Oh, I'll go ask some of my members to help them right away!"

Like that. It wouldn't make a difference, but she would try and help anyway.

I caught her arm.

"No, it's fine. Reborn and I already took appropriate measures." At her inquiring look, I continued, munching a pink sugar cookie. "Reborn stole the watches, and put illusions in their place. First class ones. Bermuda would look at them and realise they're fake right away, so he'll give up even before he touches them. Reborn has the watches under very safe keeping right now," I added to assuage her fears.

I snorted inside.

Under _Tsuna's bed._

Bermuda would have such a fit if he ever realised that. Something like, 'ha, I always knew Reborn thought outside the box!' type of thing, since Bermuda has a very strong fixation on Reborn that kind of reminded me of Gokudera to Tsuna. But creepier.

"Anyway, understand this. Byakuran has to wear the Boss Watch, and Colonello would come and target all three Boss watches that are going to be here at once – Yours, Reborn's and Verde's."

"Verde?" Yuni repeated, rolling it around her mouth. "He's very strong this time."

"Yup. He's come to take the kill for your watch. You battled him yesterday, right?"

She nodded. "My members are still recovering. I'm just glad they didn't die. Mukuro was surprisingly lenient with my people."

I thought back to Byakuran's words, and looked at Yuni.

"Maybe it's because we're all the same type of people. He seems to be more lenient with us, doesn't he? Not Byakuran, though."

Yuni scrunched up her face.

"Same type of people?"

Oh, so she didn't know about the Brighteye. I always thought she did, with all those pitying smiles and little gestures to help. It had made connecting to her easier, without lies.

Well, nothing for it.

I gave a chuckle and a little smile. "Probably because he met you in the future. Remember how he was trying to help you all the time?"

Yuni gave a little smile. "Yes. You were too. And Tsuna, and Uncle Reborn, and Gamma…"

She trailed off at that, and I patted her on the head. "Relationship problems?"

She started to shake her head, before pausing and glancing at me. I tried to look encouraging, since here she was, a little five year old girl with her mother recently dead and a divided Mafia family trying to save everyone she saw because she knew them in the _future_. The people she died for, actually.

And from her face, apparently she wasn't in love with the man she was in love with in the future.

"In the future," she started slowly, "I was in love with Gamma. For his strength, his maturity, for always being there for me when I needed it. Whenever I stumbled in trying to take over the family, he would pick me up and continue without ever questioning me at all. It was because of Gamma that I could love the family so much, and the Family love me back."

"Mhmm?"

"But now I can't feel that love for Gamma!" She clutched her chest in mild panic. "In the future, loving Gamma drove me to do nearly _everything_ I did, but now I can only see him as an older brother, a father figure and…"

I sighed.

"Yuni, how old were you in the future?"

"Sixteen."

"Right. Okay, how old are you now?"

"Five."

"In the future, you're a teenager, Yuni. Someone old, mature and dashing comes and takes care of you, loves you for who you are, and sweeps you off your feet. And you're a _hormonal teenager."_

Yuni's eyes widened. I nodded in approval. She seemed to get it now.

"You're five right now. Your body isn't built for love like that yet, so it's perfectly normal, Yuni. Let yourself grow, let yourself see if you can still love Gamma like that, okay? Gamma probably remembers you loving him, and right now _he's_ the hormonal teenager, not a jaded young man," I mused. "He's probably much more emotional right now, but he'll calm down. You'll grow up."

I ruffled her hair. "Let's see, okay?"

Yuni just looked at me with such _sadness_, before launching a hug at me over the bed, and I nearly fell over. I blinked at the ceiling, before patting her head unsurely. Did my attempt at advice go wrong or something? Why was she sad?

"I'm going to miss you, Alice-nee."

And she surprises me once again.

Would she still be here, four weeks after the plot officially ends? I hope not. I didn't want Yuni coming to my funeral.

"It's okay. Anyway, going back to the plan, remember to make an alliance with Tsuna, okay? Reborn will know what to say and do."

Yuni nodded. "What about you? Why not join an alliance with your Arcobaleno between us?"

"Fon?" Yuni nodded. "No, I don't think so. Hibari is very… wild when it comes to fights. I think I'll have my hands full just trying to get him not to smash his own watch."

Yuni giggled, before a yell for breakfast echoed up to her, and she guiltily put her hands to her mouth to brush crumbs away. "Gamma would be so grumpy at me for eating cookies before breakfast!"

I raised an eyebrow, before standing up and hauling her up too. "Then it'll be our secret."

Yuni gave a little grin.

"Gamma _always_ knows, you know."

And he did, standing at the bottom of the grand marble staircase, hands on hips wearing a _pink, frilly apron._

Oh, burn my eyes now.

* * *

"_Thank you, Alice-nee. How you stayed up for me, kept supporting and reminding me of my friends in the future… I sensed my future-self was very happy. You helped her very much, so thank you. I can only wish I could do the same for you."_

Yuni's parting words (after a surprisingly delicious breakfast – who knew Gamma could cook?) kept echoing around in my brain. Even after retreating back to the car and giving Grey his own little plate of Gamma-made breakfast and drinking a cup of tea at the back, I wondered.

Did I really make such a big difference?

Namimori CBD was coming closer, the early morning shoppers calmly going around doing their shopping. At a red-light, one of the pedestrians was Nana, and she looked up only to see me.

"Alice-chan!" She gushed, waving happily at me over huge shopping bags, and Grey, when the light turned green, simply turned to the side of the road. It was so early there were practically no cars parked anyway.

I stepped out of the car, smiling at her.

"Nana-san," I said out of instinct (before the frown on her face reminded me I had agreed to call her Nana), "why are you holding so much shopping?"

She smiled at me, holding… seven bulging shopping bags.

Oh gosh. _Seven?_

And it was all _food_ too.

"Well, with Iemitsu back, and all his friends and Bianchi, as well as Tsuna always coming back hungry with Lambo and I-pin, Reborn and Fuuta who are all growing boys, I need all this food."

I tutted.

"They should be more considerate of you, Nana."

She beamed at me, shaking her head wildly.

"No, Alice-chan! I'm happy with all these people in the house. Finally, after all these years, the house feels full and happy. After so many years of just Tsuna and me, I feel alive!"

Nana beamed at me, and I gently took some bags out of her hands.

"Have you finished your shopping?"

"Yes, I was just on my way back home before any of them wake up, so I could cook some good breakfast. They always wake up so hungry."

Grey slid out of the car, and began picking up shopping bags with me, already knowing what I wanted to do (and obviously approved with the warm smile he gave me) and slid all the bags in the back. Nana watched this with large eyes, before kicking into action.

"No, Alice-chan! I couldn't ask you to drive me back!"

I gently took her arm and guided her into the backseat with me.

"You're not asking, it's an honour. Please sit, Nana."

She sat down, and after checking all the shopping bags were inside, Grey slid back into the driver's seat, made sure we put on our seatbelts and u-turned to go to Tsuna's house.

We sat in silence for awhile, before Nana leaned towards me and took my head in her hands. Tenderly, she turned my head and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

"You're a good child, Alice. Your parents would be so proud of you, so smile more okay?"

I closed my eyes, replacing Nana's hands with my mother's.

A smile inadvertently crept across my face.

"Okay."

_Soon._

* * *

I got back to the apartment to see Chrome collapsed in front of the elevator.

I stared down at her for a few moments before it clicked.

"Chrome! What are you doing? Aren't you supposed to be at school?" I checked the time. Nine-thirty. Yup. School had started already. Kneeling down, I realised she wasn't even awake, and I was talking to an unconscious body.

Oh damn. I quickly checked her pulse and breathing, turning her on her side and making sure her airway was clear.

"Chrome, wake up! Even if you're only a little aware, open your eyes. You don't need to talk or anything…" I rambled, and sighed in relief when Chrome opened one bleary eye. Then immediately leapt into worry again when she immediately coughed out pink spittle on my cream carpet.

"You're awake, is it too hard to talk? How long have you been like this?"

"…tried to…go to school," she rasped out. "Couldn't keep… breakfast down. Sorry."

Chrome was still apologising in a situation like this?

"No need to apologise. You obviously can't move right now, but do you think I could move you to the couch, at least? Would your organs falter or anything?"

She nodded, letting me move her to the couch and I did so, dearly regretting not keeping up with training. My burning arms!

But even then, Chrome was still _way_ too light.

I few wisps of hair got caught in my face, and I blew at it, irritated while gently lowering Chrome onto the couch.

Chrome, I decided while fixing the chopsticks in my hair, was far too pale. Barely breathing too, but her stomach hadn't sunk in at all, and I took good things as they came. Her eyes were clearer now, more awake and I took the opportunity to try and _keep her that way_.

Until Grey came up, at least. He had a little medical knowledge.

Sigh. I was useless without Grey.

"Chrome, are you supporting yourself with illusions, or is Mukuro doing it?"

"Mukuro-sama's," she replied.

I frowned.

She was still using Mukuro's spotty ones… they were obviously getting weaker and weaker. But her body was obviously clinging to them, even while her mind was rejecting them. Chrome was being torn inside out, literally, because of her feelings.

As dramatic as that sounds, and as much as I want to, I couldn't decide for Chrome.

She had to realise she was her own independent being herself.

She could do it.

I smiled, smoothing her hair from her forehead, and she smiled weakly.

"Don't worry though, Alice. I kept up the Shimon illusions so no one will be suspicious."

I distantly heard Grey stepping out the elevator, and I looked at him, asking him non-verbally for the ambulance before turning to Chrome.

"Chrome, forget them. Save the strength for yourself. Can't you see?" I straightened out the crinkles in her shirt for wont of something to do. "You're weaker than before now. I want you healthy more than my plan to work."

A weak hand grasped mine.

"But you needed it right? You have something big happening, right?" She coughed. "I don't only want to be strong for Mukuro-sama. I want to be strong for what Mukuro-sama loves. I want to be strong for what I love."

Silence. Grey snapping his phone shut.

"So trust me, Alice. I will keep up those illusions." She gave me a weak, pleading smile. "I'm strong enough."

I closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry, Chrome. I never implied you weren't strong enough. Thank you, now the plan will go even smoother than before. I trust you."

She relaxed her hold on my hand, smiling in relief.

I'd acknowledged her strength.

"Thank you, Alice."

"No problem. I'm sorry for using you like this."

Chrome shook her head. "You aren't using me, Alice. This is a… favour, for a dear friend."

I blinked.

Oh.

Then Grey came in, directing some people with stretchers towards us, and Chrome was moved down into the ambulance, and I sat next to her in the ambulance as Grey followed behind in a car. She was checked in and immediately put in an Intensive Care unit, filled with machines of all kinds that I didn't understand, as the doctors fired rapid Japanese at me which I didn't try to understand.

After awhile, Grey arrived.

I stood up and left.

* * *

I… kind of skipped school that day.

I had a tonne of excuses, of course, but still. I was saving the world seemed like a pretty good reason, right? But it was the first time I voluntarily skipped school in _both_ my lives.

I sighed, before staring out the window again, trying to focus on something other than Chrome. I'd footed all the bills, directed it to my bank account which would be plenty enough, and made sure the best facilities were at hand.

Of course she would be okay!

I thumped my head on the car window.

Grey had that bemused smile again.

Maybe he knew all the Brighteyes came from other worlds or something, and hypothesised that banging heads on walls was part of my original homes culture and therefore we all wore helmets all day just so we could bang our heads on walls and…

Hey, I was going off topic.

Maybe the stress was getting to me after all.

And maybe preparing for impending doom because I was going to the Disciplinary Committee room right after skipping school.

...

I did have a death wish after all.

* * *

I prepared myself for Hibari madness – because being with Hibari was always a stressful ordeal of a type, as I walked through the school halls trying to be nondescript. I even put on my long hidden-away sunglasses just so I didn't have to worry about fanboys and the like.

Before the Disciplinary Committee room I took them off and took a deep breath. The hallway was deserted.

Probably knew that Hibari was in there.

I sighed to myself even as I slid open the door. I must be insane. Unlike those people who stayed _far far _away. Yup, they were heck smart. I mean, hello? Hibari and his Disciplinary office were practically married. If anyone stepped in it and spilt coffee…

Well, you die. Bitten to death. He would dress up as a zombie, creeping up on you in the dark, with his fake plastic fangs and a really swishy black and red velvet cloak, muahaha-ing and BITE YOU TO DEATH! Literally.

Wait, were they called zombies?

(Even if I did tell myself that I would stay away from Hibari, for some reason, it was getting harder and harder to do.)

"Hello Hibari, Kusakabe, everyone," I greeted with a little bow, closing the door and settling down in the comfy chair next to the door. There were about ten people in the room, Kusakabe and Hibari included. I realised belatedly that I was sitting next to Fon, and gave him my greetings accordingly. The others in the room gave me a cursory glance, realised Hibari wasn't reacting (surprisingly – maybe he didn't know I skipped?) and just gave me a nod and returned their work.

Hibari had a little smirk, as he shrugged on his jacket. His eyes didn't have much of a manic gleam to them today, more of a determination than anything else. The afternoon light reflected on something strapped to his sleeves – tonfa? – before he straightened it and smoothed out his collar. Pulling a hand through his hair, he opened the window with the other.

Hibird flew through, chirping happily at Hibari and he let it rest in his newly tousled hair, Hibird fluffing itself up in contentment as it settled down. All the disciplinary members around me worked around him in a mild silence – there were quiet conversations here and there, and some had to move around to do their tasks, so that indicated that Hibari being calm was quite a… normal thing.

He had obviously seen me enter this room. This was _Hibari_, so he had probably sensed my presence down the hallway or something. But now he had let me see this obvious normal every day routine.

Seeing this side of Hibari actually convinced me that a person _can_ change that radically in ten years.

He looked good, surprisingly. More at peace with himself, less of a manic, driving force of will to do something. Not that anyone actually knew what drove him to do the things he did (and with such a passion) but to know that he could be less of a—

Ahem.

On that golden afternoon, I finally understood why my future self (maybe) had become closer to Hibari enough that it changed the future Hibari forever.

Hibari sat back down, flipping through paperwork, and I smiled. Hibird was turning around in little circles in his hair, trying to swirl up a little nest of some sort, and Hibari didn't mind. Just kept looking at papers, feeling (and being) completely at ease in this room with his subordinates, work, and Fon and me sitting next to the door.

Fon was sitting quietly next to me, his eyes also trained on the scene where Hibari had settled down, muttering something to Kusakabe and obviously dismissing him for his work.

"You have never seen him this way before, have you?"

I looked at Fon, him and his obvious resemblance to the boy across the room, sipping tea. They were both prodigies, both knew each other from before…

"You've seen him like this?" I asked, quietly. The sound still seemed to ripple out into the room, waves in a peaceful pond.

There was a pause, before Fon gave a tiny smile.

"Not many are privileged to see it," Fon replied. "He can only ever relax around people he trusts, even if he himself doesn't admit it."

I blinked, and turned back to Hibari signing some papers from a neat little stack next to him. Although his shadow stretched across the paper, he didn't turn on the lamp. Yes, he looked content like this, and at this unexpected revelation I felt a flush of warmth towards Hibari.

He did care after all.

Fon reached out to a little table to poor himself a bit more tea.

"He is very much still a boy trying to find his limits and realise his own place in the world. All people need to live before realising the worth of what they lose, lost, and have to gain. Hibari is still human."

I gave a small sigh.

"I've always thought of him as someone more than human. He's just so strong, and has so much potential in _everything_ that he might want to be. And he seems so confident about it."

Fon nodded.

"True, Hibari is a remarkable individual. Remember though, humans are social creatures. They seek out in others comfort and warmth when they lack their own."

Huh?

This time it was Fon staring at me in that knowing way reminiscent of Yuni, but kept quiet and focused on the room again. Slowly, in time, I followed. There was something about the Disciplinary Room when the Committee displayed obvious teamwork and efficiency and _camaraderie_ that all revolved around Hibari and his invisible goal.

Even though the pompadours burned my eyes.

I smiled.

Hibari was a wonderful leader.

The sun was nearly underneath the city skyline when Hibari's calm demeanour spiked into something more familiar.

"Oh," Hibari smirked over a document, eyes sharp and dangerous. "So that idiot got hired as a teacher."

Oh yeah, Dino got hired today. Good thing I skipped – something I remembered from the manga was that our whole class was gushing about his hotness. Since Dino is Hana's type, I sure would have been getting an earful if I went to school. Thank goodness I skipped.

Good thing too, that I knew the teacher now. I could just tell him to change my attendance record.

The Disciplinary Committee shifted to do their normal 'greet the new teacher' routine, which basically told them who was the top monkey in the school (Hibari). Hibari though, waved a hand.

"No, I'll meet him myself."

The members all exchanged pitying looks (no doubt for poor Dino's fate, if he was any other teacher). Fon put down his tea.

Hibari stalked past, Fon jumping on his shoulder, and I just continued to sit there, settling down even more and watching Hibari's group work in silence. Kusakabe approached me asking if I wanted tea, and I agreed. The other members just passively accepted my existence in this room, and I was surprised since they seemed quite tight-knit.

Hibari's acceptance was all that was needed in this room, huh?

I wasn't about to complain.

I pulled out my phone, as watching the sun finish setting (around six now, the fight was at eight) and gambled.

Tsuna as he is now is not as blind, or as unsure as before. He actually trusts his intuition, and maybe this time he would realise that Reborn needed him as much as Tsuna needed Reborn. Walking out the room, I called Tsuna.

"Alice!" His voice replied after a few rings. "I didn't see you at all today! Or Chrome either. Are you two okay?"

"Chrome is in hospital."

There was a short gasp, before he was practically screeching in my ear. "Oh, is she okay? Are you okay? You're not hurt are you? Can I visit her?"

"Please visit her. Yes, I'm fine. Tsuna, I haven't got time. Can you trust me?"

"Of course!"

I needn't have asked. Typical Tsuna.

"Tsuna. Tonight, you will be rescued by someone in a black suit."

"Wha-what? How do you know that? Alice? You sound strange, are you reall–"

"He will call himself Chaos, but listen to me. Look at his sideburns. Look at his attitude, his behaviour. Listen to your intuition, and trust yourself. Remember, you're our Boss, so be more confident about yourself. Please don' reject reality. You will finally understand the extent of Reborn's curse if you do."

"You know Reborn's curse?"

"You will understand more if you do what I say, Tsuna. Please. I have to go now, bye. Someone is calling me."

I hung up on his questions and looked out at the deserted corridor. Outside the windows was a courtyard just as deserted. I sighed, hoping Tsuna wouldn't disappoint Reborn. If he did this, Reborn truly would not ever be able to let Tsuna go. I would know for sure that, when I leave, Reborn would always be a close ally to Tsuna.

Which is all he needs really, with the rest of his Guardians.

Smiling, I started walking towards the teacher's room and realised I caught Hibari right when he finished talking to Dino. Dino looked past him to see me, his face breaking out into a large grin.

"Alice! You're okay!"

I smiled at Dino, waving. Hibari gave a huff before stalking away, and I had to hurry to catch up, so I just tossed a goodbye, and 'see you later tonight' over my shoulder. Dino just continued grinning and waving until a sharp voice (my English teacher?) yelled at him to get back to organising.

Poor Dino had to duck back in to do work.

I caught up to Hibari and followed him silently. Fon gave me an appraising gaze, before turning back up front and sitting next to Hibird on Hibari's shoulder (which made a very cute picture). I couldn't let him out of my sight this time. Tonight changed everything. Tonight, Bermuda would come to find no watches for him to steal. Tonight, Tsuna would realise who Reborn was and could be. Tonight, Hibari and hopefully Byakuran wouldn't lose their watches.

Tonight, our plan started.

* * *

I was still tagging behind Hibari when he was stalking purposefully towards Dino's hotel. I gave a odd little wave to catch Fon's attention, and with a little murmur into Hibari's ear he jumped onto my shoulder instead, landing nimbly and sitting all in one fluid movement.

"What is it, Brighteye?" He asked conversationally. It was obvious the next battle was near.

"Fon, the Varia is staying at the same hotel that Dino is staying at, and the battle tonight will probably be between your team and Mammon's." I let Fon chew on this for a minute, before giving a sheepish smile. "I'm definitely not strong enough to fight them off, and Hibari would get angry if I joined anyway."

"But Hibari cannot win against them all by himself, no matter how he thinks to the contrary," Fon pointed out.

"Yes," I agreed. "So the obvious route is that you will use your Gift and fight Mammon and take care of as many Varia as you can as fast as you can in your three minutes. But please don't do that."

Fon raised an eyebrow.

"Why? Brighteye, are you planning something?"

I smiled. "Ulterior motives, remember?"

"Will this help us win?"

Fon shifted closer to my ear, so that I could hear him over the busy Namimori nightlife. Buses, cars, taxis, pedestrians walking on crowded streets. So many people who could get potentially crushed under rubble.

I could only hope no one would be hurt, then.

"I think Hibari might need a little reminder that he, although is the one who has the most potential, doesn't have the experience to back it up yet. He's so used to getting what he wants nowadays that I think he might need a small check."

Fon gave me a grim look.

"What makes you think you have the right to decide for him?"

I shrugged.

"I don't. But," I continued even as we marched ever closer to the second-largest and flashiest hotel in Namimori, "I am meddling in the outcome. Hibari is much too good of a fighter to let his watch be killed when he still has opponents to fight. Please only join the fight when it gets truly desperate, and not one second before."

I shook my head. "I can't say I understand the pain of being given a foreign body, and having someone tell you to delay regaining your original body for the sake of an unknown goal but you have to save your time. Please do not waste it. Only join in when the Mammon also uses her Gift."

"Mammon?" He asked, his eyes bright with curiosity. Richie scampered out from his lap onto my head, and I tried not to move my head that much. The monkey's little paws were kind of ticklish.

"Yes. Last time you lost because you activated your Gift too soon, and it affected the whole fight. So please don't jump in and use your gift because you want to feel your original body again."

Fon stiffened up, as he started to burn in outright denial before seeming to realise what he was about to do (what? Some form of deadly martial arts?) and deflating on himself.

"You are quite scary, Brighteye," he offered instead with a reproachful smile. A bus careened past, breaking a speed limit or two and making Hibari in front of us pause to look at its plate number. That slight pause hardly affected his step.

We arrived at the hotel, it's grand entrance only reminding of my own (but red and gold instead of cream and yellow) making me wonder if all rich hotels needed grand looking lobbies. Wait, not the right time for this.

I shook my head, stepping into the hotel after Hibari, as he headed straight to the elevator doors. The doormen closed the heavy glass entrance behind us, and the sounds of night ceased. Just murmurs, rustles, echoes

"I don't try to be so."

Fon gave me a speculative glance. "Indeed, you don't."

I hurried up a bit, and Hibari gave me a stern eye from making him hold the button that one second longer for me to get on. I gave him a calm smile back, before pressing the floor, and we both rode up.

The door opened once to let the man in the corner through and the elevator slid upwards again.

The elevator announced the floor.

I sighed, very unenthusiastic about what we were about to face.

The door opened. There was a moment of silence, where the Varia and Hibari had a stunned stare off, wondering _why the heck _the other was doing there.

Then they _grinned_.

Simultaneously.

In response, Hibari smirked, I groaned, and Fon gave a surprised murmur.

"You were right."

"You doubted me?" I asked, staring at the main members of the Varia in _despair._ How were we going to defeat them without Fon again?

"No, but truly, one has to be sceptical of the future."

True.

Well, in the manga, the watch beeped and Fon immediately leapt into battle, defeating Levi, Belphegor, Lussuria and all the weaklings in ten seconds.

What happened this time was this: Squalo grinned and yelled a greeting.

Our watches beeped the start of our next fight,.

I stepped backwards and let Hibari fly forward. The second battle started.

And Fon stayed on my shoulder.

* * *

When Mammon stepped up, and Hibari was struggling against Squalo, Belphegor and Lussuria at the same time. Levi was out cold on the side. Lussuria then got knocked out with a particularly violent kick (flew to a wall and got knocked out), while Hibari bent backwards to dodge a knife and swung a tonfa to retaliate,

Levi had been attacked first, out of all of them, and it was Varia's nature not to help when Levi was eliminated.

Poor Levi. Maybe he should get rid of his sideburns. And the gel. And the moustache. And the long set up time for the umbrellas to work.

Well anyway, so there was one down after Levi, and Hibari had struggled with the three since. It had taken much longer this time – last time Fon only needed three minutes to finish this fight with Varia. It had nearly been eight now. And since Lussuria just got knocked out, that only meant Squalo was attacking double the strength.

One could truly see the difference in strength, if I compared the scenarios.

To be fair though, I was not helping except to snipe the random knife or person from my corner and dodging knives. I was mostly static, as most of the Varia had realised I wasn't attacking and maybe (due to Brighteye tradition) I _wasn't_ going to help throughout the whole fight and just dismissed me and the Arcobaleno in my arms, since he was still a baby and could not help.

Fon was in my arms, visibly trying to restrain himself from helping. I was grateful that he was holding back though, because even if it did end faster, that didn't mean that we didn't need Fon's help later in the fight for me and Reborn's plan to work.

Hibari got another cut on his uniform as Belphegor and Squalo tag-teamed him.

That was about when Mammon stepped up to taunt Fon for not joining his representative, floating forward and bringing Xanxus forward.

Fon gave me a questioning look, asking me if it was time.

I gave him the proper respect for acknowledging my wishes, nodded towards Mammon, who hadn't started fighting yet, and I joined Hibari's side instead.

He shot me an irritated glance.

I ignored it, jumped over a tattered couch, and shot four shots at Belphegor's wrist

He dodged it, quick as a swallow's flight, and rather elegantly went into a roll. I followed his roll with shots, forcing him to continue, and Squalo paused to take in this new situation when Hibari jumped backwards, landing where Belphegor had stopped, as he smirked at me because I had run out of bullets.

Belphegor realised too late, and a silver tonfa crashed into his watch.

I calmly took out new cartridges and replaced the empty ones, folding and ducking as a sword swung at me from above, rolling out of the way and shot at the vague direction where Squalo had been.

"You stupid waste of space!" Squalo barked at him. "Did you lose your watch?" While he was yelling I got up and hid behind an upturned table, but Squalo wasn't paying attention to me anyway.

Belphegor smiled, swaying on the spot as Hibari abandoned him in favour for stronger prey.

"The prince is never beaten! But my watch got smashed."

Squalo roared in fury.

Xanxus just watched this chugging down a glass of water (what the heck? We were having a brawl in his living room, and all he did was drink water?) but I didn't get to see much because Squalo seemed to have attributed Belphegor's loss to _me_, and started leaping at me, doing all these fancy moves that I couldn't follow. They were waaaay too fast for a normal human being like me to dodge.

Thank goodness Hibari didn't like being ignored and jumped in. That blade was half a centimetre off my neck.

This went on for about… a second? Then everyone kind of stopped, because the whole room flooded with Indigo light, as Mammon transformed into her adult form _before Fon_.

I inwardly hissed success in my mind.

Fon _did it_, he found a way to make Mammon use her gift first! I was elated, and Fon even let Mammon do a rudimentary 'I'm going to smash your team' speech before activating his own gift.

That gained _at least_ ten seconds.

Reborn was going to be happy with this.

A few seconds later Fon emerged, shaking his head and sending the room a cursory glance.

"We will join the fight now," Fon said, stretching his muscles, exploring his old body again, delight barely hidden in his voice. "I've wanted to move and fight like this for a long time."

Squalo howled in laughter, delight in getting an opportunity to fight an Arcobaleno.

And Fon leapt, aiming for Squalo, while Hibari narrowed his eyes at Xanxus. Mammon stood to the side, muttering and waving her hands, and I retreated back to the side, to watch.

Since they were all doing what they did best, and it was time I did what I did best too.

You know, being safe and let the people on steroids do their job.

* * *

After awhile, the rooftop was ruined, and Hibari smirked at Xanxus, because although Xanxus had blown the whole top floor away, Hibari was still standing. He could still fight. Dino next to me (he had arrived somewhere between Mammon's illusions and Xanxus's crazy attack) had shielded me from the attack, while Fon had taken my advice, and after he had broken Mammon's illusion had stopped his own gift. He only had forty seconds left. It was better than nothing.

We all climbed back to the top floor. Xanxus and Hibari were glaring at each other, and Fon grinned, still on a battle high.

"Xanxus had to change the trajectory of the attack in order to protect his own boss watch," Fon exclaimed, while I had already started my way towards Hibari. Dino gave his own input.

"Although that Xanxus did well to protect the watch on his right hand in a split second," he commented, remembering Hibari's attack.

I didn't really care. I was just trying to reach Hibari on time.

"It's a draw," Fon declared, satisfied. The Varia were all in various states of annoyance, while Hibari was getting the most annoyed of them all.

"I won't accept this," Hibari declared as he looked over the rooftop and at Xanxus, his adrenaline still running high. He still wanted to fight, the stupid fighting maniac. Didn't I tell him there would be a stronger opponent if he kept his watch? "I'm not satisfied unless we settle this properly."

Immediately, a voice chimed in from the watch.

"That won't do! Hohoho!"

Tsunomichi's voice sounded kind of plastic. Like shiny, pink bubble-gum type of plastic.

"In the representatives, it is strictly forbidden to fight fellow representatives outside of the allocated time! If you insist on fighting, both teams will be disqualified, fufu!"

"You be quiet," Hibari ordered the watch, and I started to launch my attack.

"Huh? It's not a matter of what I say… since it's the rule…"

I hugged Hibari's arm to my chest just in time to save the watch from being pulverised by Hibari's impatience. Really, going to smash the watch with his own tonfa!

Hibari glared at me, his eyes _evil_.

"I will fight when I want to. Let go."

That sparked something within Xanxus, as he laughed. "Fight when I want to?" He freaking guffawed, as he aimed his own gun at his watch, even as Hibari struggled to get me off his arm to get a clear shot of his watch. "For this thing, we'll get rid of it together."

Mammon nearly had a spontaneous heart attack right there.

Actually, the whole Varia did even as they sprinted towards their Boss.

"Boss, DON'T DO THAT!"

And soon, Xanxus had four limpets of his own, even as Dino helped me calm Hibari down (which infuriated him more) and Fon was bowing to me in thanks even as he tried to help (it didn't help).

"Hibari!" I yelled, trying to keep a hold on his arm. He's freaking strong, "If you stop I'll rescind all your debts to me!"

"Kyoya," Dino tried, "we'll fight all we want later, okay?"

"Hibari-kun, please reconsider your promise to me," Fon stated.

Hibari just struggled more.

The Varia were having similar trouble.

"LET GO YOU PIECES OF CRAP!" Xanxus yelled at his subordinates, even as Lussuria pleaded with him.

"Don't break the watch! This is Mammon's one single wish!"

Squalo yelled at Dino instead.

"Bucking Horse, get Hibari out of here!"

Dino's face was immediately drained of all colour.

"Huh? Uh, me?"

Hibari shot Dino the deadliest glare I'd ever seen. He looked at me and sighed, before looking at Xanxus and realising he wasn't going to fight any time soon. He stopped struggling, and pushed my shoulder gently so that he was free.

Fon hopped onto my shoulder.

"Then I will start with you," Hibari stated, glaring at Dino, and Dino could only scratch his cheek, reaching for his whip and glancing around for Kusakabe _who wasn't there dammit how fast could he run again?_

And we watched, I inwardly laughing as Dino ran away from Hibari, who was chasing him with the intention to _severely hurt_.

Or as he would say,

'Bite to death'.

Fon in my arms chuckled, as we walked out of the hotel at a leisurely pace, plaster dust still in our hair, and rich patrons all freaking out about the noise, and the destruction, etcetera.

I found that I didn't really care, and wondered if Tsuna had come through, if Reborn had succeeded with Yuni, and…

Oh, I so wasn't looking forward to tomorrow.

Inwardly, I was glad that the fight ended when it did, The first hurdle on my side was over. It all depended now on how Tsuna's fight had come out.

I hope Reborn's hurdles had been cleared too.

* * *

** Reborn's team - Tsuna**

The fight had started out okay. Mukuro's group invaded Yuni's place again, and so Tsuna and Byakuran had tested their new alliance by trying to find a way around Mukuro's and Fran's illusions together. They certainly hadn't been losing when the fight took a turn for the worse. When Colonello and his father shot everyone's watch except for his because of their previous alliance.

Then an ultimatum.

Betray Byakuran and Yuni's team for Iemitsu, and their teams will bring home the victory. Verde and Yuni, two strong teams, would be out.

Tsuna stared up at his father, so far away on the cliff but still able to affect, and turn, the battle so much. Byakuran had guarded against Colonello's sniping shot at great cost, and both Mukuro and Byakuran were severely injured.

Byakuran couldn't even move his arm any more, even with his white flames coating it. Tsuna swallowed his worry, and took stock of the situation behind his curtain of Dying Will flames that calmed and soothed his nerves, letting him decide which action was best.

Yuni was safe in the mansion. Reborn was… somewhere. Byakuran on the roof with him.

"Make your decision soon, Tsuna. I can't wait for long." His father's voice echoed out from the phone. Tsuna gritted his teeth. To choose between his father's alliance, and Byakuran's. Father versus psychopath murderer.

It should have been easy.

"So what will you do, Tsuna?"

That was his father. Tsuna closed his hands into fists, gritting his teeth because _that was his father. _He was always making things more difficult for him, always making him feel worse about himself. And never, never there when it mattered. That was what made the decision so hard, as he felt near _nothing_ for his father but a long-held grudge…

Then he blinked.

"Shoot," he muttered to himself.

The decision had already been made for him. Even if he had his own Family to consider, Tsuna didn't _ever_ want to stand next to Iemitsu and what he stood for. He channelled his flames into his fist, creating Natsu's Cambio Forma, Vongola Primo's Gauntlet. Making sure it covered his Boss watch, he faced the tiny figure on the cliff.

"If it comes to this attack, I'm going to crush you father!" He shouted, and he knew Iemitsu would have heard. Father would probably not even be surprised. Tsuna glanced down.

Yamamoto and Gokudera were hurt but he knew he could trust them to survive. He took a deep breath.

"Everyone! The second shot is coming! Protect yourselves!" His eyes conveyed the other message. 'I'm sorry for not picking the easy way out, for being selfish', and his heart lightened at how easily his two friends accepted it.

"Okay!" Yamamoto shouted, running with a smile on his face at the same time Gokudera shouted 'Roger!' and ran in the opposite direction, already having some plan in action. He trusted them, so he put them out of his mind, slowly settling himself down on the roof to anchor himself for Colonello's next gunshot.

A blue glow started to build far away, from the huge gun setup next to Iemitsu, and Tsuna tried to _focus._ The Arcobaleno were crazy, strong enough to hit twenty people at once and demolish a defence as strong as Byakuran's.

He might not have a chance.

A voice coughed for his attention to his left.

"You can't leave your allies to die… you're still the same good person you always were, Tsunayoshi-kun," Byakuran said, limping towards him. Then he grimaced, obviously gave up on that and started flying with his wings, "But take this advice from me. Your gauntlet won't be able to withstand a blast like earlier."

Tsuna glanced at his gauntlet. But this was Vongola Primo's shield, the ultimate defence that could handle even Torikabuto's electric flames. Colonello's was rain, it slowed down, calmed…

Oh.

No wonder if stopped all defences. The flame's quality weakened it to the extent that there must practically be _no_ defence. With a Flame as strong as Colonello's the tranquilising effect would affect the flames that made up Natsu.

"Additionally, that shot has incredible precision, and if your wristwatch isn't covered, it'll get hit for sure. But if you do suddenly decide to protect it, you're going to end up hurt pretty badly. Like me, here," Byakuran said, glancing at his arm torn to bloody shreds.

Byakuran gave a wry grin. He would need medical attention soon, if the blood flow continued dripping like that. He was just about to propose a way to save Tsunayoshi's watch, before he paused, amazed that he had been caught.

The little Brighteye this morning had been right after all.

He… had been going to say that he sacrifice himself for Tsunayoshi, but an image from this morning. Yellow eyes.

_[Keep your watch at all costs, Byakuran.]_

Byakuran smiled, giving a little hum, wheels in his head turning even as he rephrased what he was just about to say. "It looks like you're in need of someone to protect you, Tsunayoshi-kun!"

Gamma gave a start, near forgotten in all the chaos. Oh yeah, Byakuran glanced at him. Gamma had climbed up onto the roof with them, even if he was nowhere near as strong as he was in the future.

"Byakuran, wait! If your Boss watch is destroyed, the Princess's curse won't be able to be removed right?"

Byakuran raised an eyebrow. He _knew_ he couldn't sacrifice himself but if Gamma wanted to do it… well, it was an easy way out.

"Aah," he said, tending to his wounded arm. "I suppose you're right. Scratch that idea, I guess–"

"I'll do it," Gamma stated, his eyes determined.

"Gamma!" Yuni's panicked exclamation came from underneath. They all started. When had Yuni come outside? But, Byakuran noticed, she was with Reborn – she would be fine. So Byakuran ignored her and focused on the suicidal idiot in front of him instead. Even though if Gamma _did_ sacrifice himself it would save him a lot of brainwork, the Princess would be sad. And he wasn't a genius for nothing, even if these circumstances sure seemed bleak. He'd come through.

Anyway, Tsunayoshi had insane luck. He could rely a bit on that too.

"Even I took a load of damage from that," Byakuran told Gamma offhandedly. "If you go, you'd be killed instantly."

He couldn't even stand against the illusions, much less _Arcobaleno_.

Weak.

Gamma gave a smirk. "Heh, if I died here like that, I would have no regrets. Besides," he added, "it would seem the Princess's feelings for me have faded away…" His voice was soft, and Byakuran wondered if the Princess had heard. But, Byakuran noted in amusement, the Princess was fine tuned to all things Gamma.

"Gamma! What are you saying?" Yuni yelled, hurt in her voice as she tried to run around the corner of the mansion to see Gamma better. She couldn't climb up to the roof to where they were yet, and Gamma seemed to take solace in that. No chance for direct confrontation.

Feh, Byakuran shrugged. All humans were cowards to some feelings. Now about the _Arcobaleno_.

Gamma lifted his head, voice tired.

"You think I haven't noticed? Your heart has changed, Princess… Ever since we've met again in this era, it's like I'm talking to a wall. You're completely cold." He smiled down at her. "We can stop trying so hard now…"

Yuni bit her lip.

"That isn't it! You're wrong, Gamma!"

Hey, the Princess's voice could be quite shrill when it needs to be, Byakuran mused even as he sat back and watched. They were both pretty blind, in their own way. As one who could not count his years, this argument seemed surprisingly trite. And really, they were doing their romantic drama in the middle of a battle?

They had _no_ sense of timing. If they had only been honest, and hadn't pretended to be happy, they wouldn't need this conversation at all!

Byakuran hummed and nodded to himself.

Honesty was always the best policy~

"It's you! You're the one's that's different now! Here, my mother has only just died, and you still haven't been able to forget her!" Yuni continued yelling Gamma, trying desperately to get her point across. Because she still loved Gamma, even if she was confused. Even if she _couldn't_ feel the intensity that had governed her emotions in the future.

She still loved Gamma.

She just… understood why they changed now. Alice-nee had helped.

Gamma looked shocked, and Byakuran just gave a smile and giggle, still humming that really poppy song that had played on the television in the afternoon. It was just so catchy!

But enough was enough.

He had to go back to Tsunayoshi, because if he didn't then his watch would be smashed and the little Brighteye's plan would be broken. And that wouldn't do now~

He floated back up without disrupting the spat between the Princess and her knight in shining armour.

Tsunayoshi was still staring at the charging shot with a look of determination with that Gauntlet.

Byakuran sighed.

Didn't he say that it wouldn't be enough?

"Tsunayoshi, don't you have this cloak thing that can block Torikabuto's lightning enhanced rods?" Byakuran asked curiously. Tsunayoshi just looked at him with startled wide eyes, before transforming the cloak for him. The gauntlet vanished, Byakuran noted. Pity. It would have been nice to hold two forms.

"Can't you use the two forms at the same time?"

Tsuna shook his head. "I've never tried but I don't think so."

Byakuran frowned, before shrugging. "This'll have to do."

Tsuna yelped when Byakuran suddenly matched their Boss watches together and wrapped the cloak around their arms. "Byakuran, what are you doing?" He asked, though he didn't try to stop him. The cloak wrapped around the arms around five times, and he had folded it in half so that it was double layered. If one layer of cloak had stopped lightning enhanced rods, then this should be able to hold. Hopefully at least, against that Arcobaleno's snipe shot.

The Gauntlet would have been easy for the flames to tranquilize but here, there were layers and layers of defence.

It should at least delay the effect long enough for him to think of something else.

Byakuran nodded.

It was awkward to move though, with Tsunayoshi stuck onto his arm like that. But at least their watches were safer!

"Byakuran, why?" Tsunayoshi just _had_ to ask, and really, what was with all this talking in battle? He wasn't even paying attention to Colonello now.

(And he lost to this idiot?)

"Your gauntlet is too hard, Tsunayoshi," he replied cheerily, turning around so Tsunayoshi was looking at the cliffs. "Something softer and more flexible would be better, and isn't this Primo's famous invulnerable cloak? If we wrapped it around our arms, our Boss watches should be safer–"

Tsunayoshi's eyes widened at something behind him.

"Here it comes!"

Byakuran immediately dropped the act, his eyes analysing. "It's much bigger than before."

Gamma, who still hadn't realised that Byakuran had gone up when he had been talking with Yuni, leapt up to try and shield Tsuna. Yuni tried not to cry, even as she felt useless when she saw Gamma try leap to his death and Reborn jumped, trying to reach Tsuna because even he doubted Tsuna could survive this attack (even if Alice had told him so, even so…)

Really, everyone would have failed to save this little Tuna without him.

Byakuran shot a smile, before shooting his white flames so that his wings pushed everyone back. Using the arm that didn't have the Boss watch, he flung the mangled hand forward and pushed all the force of his Dying Will and waited, twisting so that he would be hit first, reaching out with his glowing hand and caught it.

It immediately tore through two of his fingers.

Oh wow, Byakuran smiled. This attack was an art. This was not merely one bullet – it was a bullet, and ten thousand little flames all pushing with the same force, directing and making the attack ten thousand times stronger.

That was why the 'bullet' was so big. This thing was closer to a missile than a mere bullet.

But he and Tsuna had to survive, as per little Brighteye's instructions.

So he defended, tried to catch all of the shots, directing the others into other directions as much as he could.

About... one hundred of them they couldn't dodge.

Oh well.

He could deal.

Ten, twenty, thirty. Byakuran blocked, Tsuna wove and dodged, and together they tried to survive.

Thirty, forty, seventy.

Byakuran couldn't feel his arm anymore.

Eighty.

A hundred.

White light clashed with Rain flames, the blue nearly mixing with white (nearly winning) before Byakuran narrowed his eyes and _pulled__, _for he hadn't been the strongest man in the world in the future for nothing. Even if his determination didn't stem from wanting to take over the worlds, he was fighting for something just as important.

There was no shame in caring for someone else, right?

The attack approximately lasted for half a minute. The boy behind him could only squeeze out two words, before he hushed Tsunayoshi. The attack had stopped, but that didn't mean anything. This was an Arcobaleno prized for sniping and only one attack?

Oh no.

The attack stopped for just a split second. Then a million of them came from all directions in a last ditch attack, his wings fell into tatters, and he felt pain just from existing and he wondered (briefly) why he was trying so hard.

Right, for her smile.

Well, it's worth it. He tried to shrug, but found it _reaaaaally _hard to do when his collarbone seemed to be shattered.

"Byakuran? You…"

Byakuran noted dimly that the Cloak was in tatters, and he wasn't sure if hand still existed or not, but when he lifted his other arm, the cloth was still there and his Boss watch was still there. A bit dusty, but intact.

Ah, but his other arm got blown apart. Kind of. No matter, he could restore it when he got the strength back! Like a zombie!

"You can't lose here. It's Yuni-chan's last wish~"

"No, why?" Tsunayoshi was still asking, and Byakuran was kind of irritated because the whole world was growing a bit fuzzy. And he was so very sleepy. Why couldn't he just ask his friend Alice-chan? She seemed to know everything this morning. He just wanted to sleep now…

But if little Brighteye knew, he guessed her Boss should know too.

Byakuran gave a smile, trying not to fall over.

"What is a God, Tsunayoshi-kun? Tell me?"

Tsuna blinked. Huh?

"Speechless? Don't know? Some big, spiritual, great power?" Byakuran taunted, giving him the most common answers. "This is what most people think a God is. And maybe it is. We're human, we certainly won't understand what a God is, or will do."

Dimly, he realised that Tsunayoshi was trying to stop his blood flow using his Sky flames. Creative, but ultimately useless.

"But to me, I remind myself every day that it is only a word that people invented for all the things that people couldn't do. Just like the word apple. Or rock. 'God' is a word to describe something that might be real, but ultimately, not entirely understandable because the world 'God' doesn't describe the word 'human'. They are two different words for a reason, you know."

"I realised those limitations only after you defeated me, Tsunayoshi."

Poor Tsunayoshi was still confused.

"In the future, right after I got defeated by you I fell into a nightmare of my own creation," Byakuran admitted, smile strong on his face. "In that dream, I defeated you in that game of mine, but afterwards when all my wishes came true, having lost all my goals I became 'nothing'."

"I had done everything I wanted, I had all the power and life I wanted. I had everything I needed, and I was alone, I was dying without being able to die. It's lonely, you know, at the top," Byakuran mused. "I returned to a state of no attachments or connections. There was nothing at all. I didn't care what happened. I was just waiting for a death that wouldn't come."

Ten millions of selves with ten millions of lives that never ended, utopia after utopia. Worlds all homogenised.

Boring, flawless, perfect machinery.

Day after day, the same perfection, same routine, same helplessness. He became the flaw in his own perfection.

Who could save a God-delusioned human?

He didn't know why he was telling Tsunayoshi this, but it felt nice. To know that even though this boy was a foe, he would empathise and draw his words into his heart and accept them. Like that sky thing they were always spouting about in Vongola. The weather report stuff.

"But from far away, she came just for me," Byakuran smiled. "A girl who worried about me from the bottom of her heart, and that entire time that I felt so far away, she stayed with me… and that warmth brought me back to life."

Maybe someone only needed to care.

The kindness of that child's heart was the glue that connected him back to reality.

"This time, it's my turn to protect Yuni-chan's heart~" He said, finally allowing himself to collapse onto the roof and grimace at the blood soaking through his shirt.

Tsuna unwrapped his own hand from the non-existent cloak. There was one single, tiny scratch on the side.

That was all.

Byakuran smiled, somehow elated. Little Brighteye promised to save them all – Tsuna surviving only preludes to that, which meant that he was that much closer to repaying his eternal debt to that little girl.

"Go now, Tsunayoshi-kun. Defeat your father!"

(Oops, he shouldn't have shouted. Now he felt even more woozy... and did his rib just crack?)

Tsuna's fists suddenly lit with a Flame much stronger than before as he lifted himself up and faced the cliffs where the shots had come from.

_Father._

"I will!"

Byakuran sighed.

Finally.

Thank goodness.

He wasn't sure he could give another motivational speech on the spot like that again.

* * *

Tsuna was angry and frustrated.

Why, why couldn't he defeat that useless waste of space? That bastard who abandoned his mother and himself alone in that house forever. Empty promises for anniversaries, birthdays, Christmases.

That embarrassment of a man who, in the rare occasion he did stop by, would just snore his ass off passed out from drinking, or talk about meaningless bullshit about how 'Tsuna can become a better man like me' as if he had always been there, like he _cared?_

How could someone worth so little be so strong?

"This is boring," his father said, sitting with a desolate look on his face. Tsuna's eyes widened.

What?

"Fighting with you is boring," his father repeated.

Tsuna couldn't believe this.

All his memories of his father were of _absence_. Actual memories of his father were few, and far between. What he counted as memories of his father were more akin to the hopeful looks in the letter box that mother always had, every day. The crushing disappointment when he wasn't there for his second, his fourth, his seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth birthday, when he actually cared.

Then it was hatred.

Then… then it was nothing.

Annoyance, perhaps. Shame, disappointment. And even then, he was never there for him and Nana.

And here he was.

Iemitsu was absent again. He was going to sit out on a fight between them because… because of something like _boredom? _It was like he was _spitting_ on all the pain that Nana and he had gone through, all those years of growing up and waiting.

Always waiting for a father.

His Dying Will fizzled out. "Wh-what did you just say?" Tsuna yelled, face disbelieving. "A-are you making fun of me?" Tsuna choked, eyes burning (he willed tears _not_ to fall), trained on his father.

He was replied with silence.

"Well, say something!" Tsuna shouted, pounding his fists on the cliff rocks. His father didn't even look at him. Like he was just a fly. Like he wasn't his _son_. "Don't ignore me! DO YOU HEAR ME?"

His father moved, still staring out into the distance.

What right did he have to look sad?

"Take off your Boss watch. I'm going to smash it."

"Wh-what the hell? What would make you think I could possibly do something like that?" Tsuna protested, getting up on his knees, unbelieving because his father was still that arsehole that he had been throughout his whole life.

Moments of his childhood, where he compared his father to other children's. Of playing in parks alone, when another kid had their father chasing them, piggy-backing them, buying ice-cream, playing baseball, doing homework, scolding, encouraging, laughing, smiling… and comparing them to his own.

His own, passed out drunk on one of the two days he was back home.

"In that case, your father will smash it by his own hand."

And Iemitsu dug out a huge boulder straight from the ground, easily five times taller than himself, and Tsuna stared at it in fear, and disbelief because something in him just broke, some shattering trust (he was still surprised he _had_ any) in his father that he would never hurt him, that he loved him against the odds…

Just like those fairytales Nana read to him, always reassuring him that yes, Daddy always loves Mommy and his son.

"You're going be needing a hospital," his father said with a calm face, as if he wasn't holding up death with one hand.

_("That Iemitsu, he's not serious about this at all. If he really wanted to break that watch, he would have broken it for sure by now."_

_Colonello glanced at Lal. "I think he wants to tell Tsuna something. Who'd have thought he'd be so terrible at stuff like this?")_

And Tsuna watched as his father threw the huge boulder at him, and he was defenceless and hopeless, not even able to get his dying will up because his father had just broken that last bit of trust that he had had in him… Maybe in the deepest part of his heart, he had wanted his acceptance.

Even in facing his father, he was a failure.

But even so, faces flashed by him, Kyoko's bright face, Gokudera's enthusiasm for UFO's. Yamamoto playing baseball, Ryohei laughing with Lambo. Alice, struggling with chopsticks, Chrome lying in hospital struggling to breathe.

All of them fighting next to him, time after time, day after day.

And winning.

Even if he was a failure, he wasn't one when he had his Family, the one he chose.

His friends.

And as their Boss he will not disappoint them.

Tsuna glared, his teeth gritted as his head grew hot, started to burn like it was melting into liquid metal, pain like the first time he turned on Dying Will all those years ago to propose to Kyoko. Only this time, he had no regrets. No wish to fulfil before dying.

All he knew was that he had to prove himself to that that _man_ over there who had never acknowledged, cared, or… loved him. To prove that he was worth it. That he was not 'Dame-Tsuna', ever useless, with no friends.

He was a Boss, and he took what he got. He had gained what he had with pride and honour.

Tsuna screamed as the heat exploded from his forehead, channelled to his arms as the sky flames, hot, powerful and so much heavier than normal, destroyed the boulder that Iemitsu threw at him. Flames poured out of him, easy, free.

He was limitless in his anger.

Iemitsu's eyes widened, and immediately took on a more serious slant, and Tsuna felt a sense of vicious satisfaction, diving in to start attacking. That flash of surprise, that serious glint on his face was euphoric as he swung to smash that face in

_no this isn't who I want to be_

The flames flickered, before anger took over again, giving him strength and power

_driving purpose will power anger flames of rage no don't I don't want to hurt him like this_

But don't you hate him?

_no no no no mother loves him_

Iemitsu threw another boulder at him, bigger than the last, and Tsuna still had enough flame left to pulverise it, cause it to crash back at Iemitsu before flying backwards, to have more time to react. Iemitsu destroyed it just as easily, and Tsuna knew, he was proving himself finally, after years and years of his mocking

_no no no no remember Gokudera Yamamoto Alice Alice Alice Kyoko Lambo Gokudera Ryohei Yamamoto Alice_

Friends

_with me even though I am useless and weak still am but know they see me as strong don't like this_

Tsuna faltered, grasping his head again. His head felt like it would explode, as the flames nearly dripped out of his head from how heavy the flames were. Like Xanxus's, like the Second's. Compressed and so full of anger, resentment and rage

_anger never helped anybody_

He let it go, suddenly weak as a noodle as he collapsed into a crater, just as Iemitsu had sent a massive boulder at him. He couldn't be bothered even to look up. Tsuna was absolutely spent, as the rage (how could one hold so much anger without turning insane?) had took as much as it had destroyed.

And even as he saw his impending death, he felt immeasurably proud for overcoming that… whatever it was.

Red, red, red.

No thinking, no acting, just the urge to kill and destroy.

How…?

Tsuna stared blankly at the huge piece of rock (how did Iemitsu crack such pieces of rock from the ground anyway?) before three gunshots, and the boulder shattered into pieces, without one shattered rock hitting Tsuna, as round after round was fired, rubble falling round Tsuna in a perfect circle.

_(Only one person could have pulled off something like that, Lal thought to herself, drawing back a bit even as the tall silhouette stepped out from behind the boulders)_

"Who?" Tsuna wondered, weakly looking around to see a mysterious dark-suited man coming out from behind a tree. He was tall, wearing a fedora with an orange band – much like Reborn, really.

"Chaos, right?" Reborn-man asked, one hand in his pocket, gun in his other hand.

"What? Not Ciaossu?" Tsuna asked himself as he hauled himself up, dragging himself towards a nearby rock to lean on, taking a look at this new man.

"It's lesson time, Dame-Tsuna," the cool looking guy just said to him with an accent that seemed so familiar.

"A suit… pistols… Y-you," Tsuna muttered to himself, tired brain sluggishly trying to figure out who the Reborn-man was.

"Who are you?" Tsuna asked the man who just rescued him.

"What?" Iemitsu said, off-balance. His son couldn't be that dense, could he? (After all, it was _obviously_ Reborn using his Gift)

"It's Chaos," the cool man just said with a sigh, straightening his hat in the exact same way that Reborn used to do it. Maybe all fedora wearing men did that? Maybe it was all the rage in Italy, or something.

"You don't know who he is? This guy doesn't have nicknames like Dame-Tsuna, you know," Colonello piped up from the bushes. Iemitsu gave a small smirk at his comrade.

"How did you know I was called Dame-Tsuna?" Tsuna ignored them both, focusing on something that hurt less. He wasn't sure it reached the man though his voice was very hoarse. The man just shrugged carelessly.

"It's a famous name in my neighbourhood."

"And where would that be?" Tsuna asked with a slight bit of sarcasm and a large dose of disbelief. At least make a more credible lie. Just like how Reborn lied when he wasn't bothered, when Tsuna was being especially stupid or silly… But it couldn't be, his brain chided his intuition.

_[Please, don't reject reality]_

His intuition was screaming at him.

Even as the man stood in from of him protectively, glaring at his father for him when he, himself couldn't since he was utterly spent just from a few minutes of anger.

Pathetic.

_[Remember, you're our Boss, so be more confident about yourself] _

"Oi, Iemitsu, I'm your opponent now. Since you have already broken the alliance, I won't go easy on you," the man said to his father, and even that stance, that easy arrogance, that way of speaking… Tsuna shook himself. But it couldn't be. Reborn was a baby.

He was a baby, and babies don't shoot up into adults within minutes…

_[He will call himself Chaos, but listen to me]_

Iemitsu was smiling grimly now, and he reflected an even more serious mode that he had when Tsuna had been attacking him with the heavy Flame. Tsuna felt another wave of resentment, before calming down from being tired of feeling such negativity.

He was just so tired of being below notice, of being weaker than so many people.

Weaker than, apparently, this black suited man.

The Arcobaleno are the world's strongest babies…

(And Reborn the strongest of them all)

"Um, I'll lose my life if I don't give my one hundred percent, fighting you," Iemitsu said, shifting stances.

"That guy, he's seriously going to fight father?" Tsuna asked himself out loud, because he had always thought things better out loud. His mind was too slow, too exhausted. But something told him this was important.

This was the thing Alice had called him about.

"Don't tell me he is? Is he the new substitute for Reborn? Since he's wearing Reborn's battler watch..."

No, his intuition screamed. No, it's the same person, that's Reborn, look at his behaviour, look at his attitude—no, it can't be, babies can't be adults, Reborn wasn't as dangerous, he wasn't as frightening—no, the clothing is the same, their way of speaking is the same—no, Reborn would tell me if it was something as big as this—

Tsuna seriously wanted to stop thinking.

_[He will call himself Chaos, but listen to me. Look at his sideburns. Look at his attitude, his behaviour. Listen to your intuition, and trust yourself. Remember, you're our Boss, so be more confident about yourself. Please don't reject reality. You will finally understand the extent of Reborn's curse if you do.]_

"Open your eyes and ears, Tsuna," the man just stated, his voice deep, soothing, and calm and dangerous all at the same time, and how can that ever be Reborn? Reborn was squeaky, cute, bouncy and had this creepy slasher smile. The man's was suave and cool. "I'm going to show you just once and I'm going to say this just once."

Tsuna was yet again taken aback. Why was this guy suddenly teaching him? And why did he feel like he was accustomed to listening to him?

(See, it's Rebo—_it can't be_)

"I'll teach you two things that you're lacking in," the man said, sounding near bored and Tsuna felt a thrill that the man was using Iemitsu's tactic on him from before to throw Iemitsu off. Revenge, in a way, as Iemitsu powered up in ready for whatever the mysterious man _(Reborn, it has to be)_ was going to teach him _(no, it wasn't, can't be)._

"Lesson one," and he shot the ground, and Tsuna stared at the scene before him. Where had he gone? "First you need to observe Iemitsu," the strange man said, bopping his head with his gun in a vaguely familiar way. A baby once liked to target his hair too…

And how did he get so close to him so fast?

Tsuna gawked unattractively.

"During the period when Iemitsu wasn't home, you started to harbour some cheap pride, and it became arrogance without you knowing. This pride of yours has appeared in every one of your battles." And without meaning to, Tsuna listened. The man continued. "Dull attacks. Tasteless techniques."

The man scoffed.

Tsuna felt kind of offended.

"Iemitsu is not an opponent that you can fight with if you look down on him."

That stabbed deep, and Tsuna stared at him. How…

_(Father always useless, always causing sadness, always abandoning, as useless as I am)_

"This guy has a hundred times more fighting experience compared to you. He's also an exceptional warrior who has fought for his family a hundred times more than you."

The mysterious man then kicked him underneath the chin.

Just like Reborn.

"But still less than me," the man added smugly, and Tsuna flew backwards, his head being felt like it was stuffed with too much information, too much fighting for the whole year. He just wanted to sleep. But no.

"Lesson two."

There was more?

Tsuna wanted to groan as much as he wanted to pay attention, because something was riveting with how the man knew how to push seemingly, a stranger's buttons. Tsuna should be a stranger to him, but the mysterious man kept knowing what to say, what to do…

Tsuna watched, as the man demonstrated to him that he had forgotten the true meaning of 'Dying Will'. It wasn't fancy tricks, or flying, or sending out flames from his glove.

It was the determination to fight until your body was defeated, was broken, was going to die… but still keep going.

Tsuna stared.

If that was what Dying Will was…

Then what was it that he felt before?

_(Anger)_

"That guy… he's extremely strong…"

_(It's Reborn. It's Reborn. But how? No, no, no…)_

"It's your turn now." And the man was jumping, flying away, and Tsuna gave an involuntary shout.

"Wait!"

The man looked at him in surprise, but Tsuna was more surprised at how he had actually landed. Actually waited for him.

Tsuna gulped, the familiar feeling of nervousness, of inadequacy and foolishness following him, because what if he was wrong? Everyone would laugh at him, call him useless, but…

_[Please, don't reject reality, Tsuna]_

Alice…

"Are you Reborn?" He yelled, his face burning, scared of being wrong yet again, the humiliation in front of his father and everyone...

But Reborn had always believed in him, from the beginning.

So he felt that this man wouldn't laugh at him either.

The man slowly smiled at him.

"Gift stop."

And the man collapsed, and smoke rose, not enough to hide how the form of the man shrunk, twisted and reformed into a form that was horribly familiar.

"I thought you would never notice, Tsuna."

* * *

The bell rang distantly for the end of the fight, even as Bermuda stared at the illusions of the Shimon family.

"Bermuda…" Jager muttered to him, his voice disembodied. "What do we do? Who would do this?"

And Bermuda smiled, looking towards the cliffs and forests of Namimori.

"Only one would do this, that I know of."

"Who?"

"Reborn."

There was silence, as his subordinates destroyed the illusions out of a bit of spite. They were just there, their plan was going to succeed but _someone was trying to stop them! _They needed their revenge, they needed to _crush_ Checkerface, _tear_ his mask off, hear his screams for their suffering these thousands and thousands of years... Bermuda let them, for he was feeling a little frustration himself. And excitement, anticipation.

He knew that Reborn was special...

"Let's pay Reborn a little visit tomorrow."

* * *

Tsuna twisted and turned in his bed, as he couldn't let go of what happened that night.

Everything was turning around in his head. Reborn was actually not a baby, his father was actually not so useless after all?

And he had the capability to fight with pure anger.

The first thought that came into mind was Xanxus.

Xanxus's flames were fuelled by rage, and they even had a name for it. 'Flames of Rage', Sky flames that came from severe resentment, or anger. Much heavier, condensed, and hotter than the normal Sky flames that other wielders used, many envied it.

Tsuna once had too.

But now that he'd had a taste of it, he never wanted to again.

When he was fighting with Dying Will, he always had the sense that he was fighting for a purpose, a goal. For his friends, for what he believed in.

When his Flames were full of rage, he only felt hopelessness, and powerful, resentful anger at the one who caused it. It was rage strong enough to merit loving bloodshed, just to get part of that anger out. Anger caused by some unchangeable circumstance.

A large, driving goal to surpass it, to prove it wrong because of resentful revenge.

It was unhealthy, and Tsuna only experienced a few seconds of it, at most.

And it fit Xanxus perfectly – Xanxus angry at his role in the world. Cheated of his family, his place.

Tsuna too, if he thought about his own anger, stemmed from his helplessness at never being recognised, cheated by his _own_ _father_ for his normal, happy life.

The thing was, Tsuna knew one more person who had Flames fuelled by rage.

Hibari.

Xanxus he could do nothing about, but Hibari. Oh Hibari was part of his family, and he was worried stiff about him. If Hibari felt like he had (for those… few seconds) all the time, no wonder he loved bloodshed and violence. But what he didn't understand was his severe protective instinct.

A person under the influence of the Flames wouldn't care about anything else.

Xanxus was like that already – he cared for nothing but himself.

But Hibari…

Hibari could still be saved.

Hibari still _cared_.

But Hibari would never accept help from him, and Hibari only actually ever acknowledged Tsuna (in the future), Yamamoto and Alice. Yamamoto would be the best choice, but he already had sword lessons, the sushi shop, taking care of his dad, baseball, and dedicating his time to Tsuna to worry about. It would be too much for Tsuna to ask of him.

Alice though.

Alice would also be a good choice. Tsuna smiled, knowing Alice's blunt, but honest approach to things. She'd always been there for him, so why not Hibari as well? She was insightful, she knew the right things to say, even though Alice always seemed a bit scared of Hibari, she could stand up to him if she wanted to.

…

Well, Tsuna thought she could anyway.

It was decided then.

Tsuna rolled over, bunching up his blanket over his head to try falling asleep under Reborn's snores.

Tomorrow, he would ask Alice to keep and eye and maybe get closer to Hibari.

He was sure Alice wouldn't refuse if he explained his reasons.

He wanted to know what drove Hibari to such extremes.

Why would Hibari be so full of… anger?

* * *

**Extra**

Fon met Hibari when he was still a child, and he was still perfecting his seventh form of martial arts. The little child in the traditional house swathed in rich silks surrounded by bodyguards had a small blank face, so purely unnatural because no child would have a face so controlled.

So many found children adorable were because of their inexperience, of their lack of control over their facial expressions. They were honest, because smiles were doubly pure when one came from a corrupted society where smiles and promises and whispers of love could mean your death the next day. In a world of trampled trust, many turned their love, their only trust to children. Children were too pure, too beautiful in a way that they should never exist to become people who murder, steal and lie just for some money, prestige, honour and survival.

Fon stepped into the run-down hotel, passing a few men that had poorly hidden guns in their top pockets, and slipped into a room after muttering a simple password and flashing a card. The door opened. A group of men turned, and the richest one smiled at him.

"Ah, Fon," a man, as faceless and as dirty as the rest, came up to him. "Our rising champion."

"Hello," Fon smiled back, and he remembered (inconsequentially) that he was glad he wore his favourite martial arts outfit, comfortable black flats, loose white pants and a red over shirt. One must always be wary.

"May I introduce to my son?"

Hibari came forward, and Fon remembered the child had stepped forward neatly, and the face and hand that was extended were perfectly still, polite and perfectly rehearsed.

Fon crouched down, ignoring the hand and gave a kind smile. He was fifteen and young in the Chinese triads, as well as a strong fighter. One could ignore some little formalities here and there.

Hibari's eyes were turned to the floor. It wasn't a particularly special floor, all muffled carpeting and blue grey, matching the subdued colouring of the room. Dark brown walls, and antique wooden chairs with paintings proudly proclaiming their heritage. Flowers dipped, calligraphy adorned the walls, and Hibari stared at Fon's shoes.

"I am Fon. You are?"

It was with no hesitation that Hibari retracted his hand when he realised it was being ignored and stiffly addressed Fon's shoes with a slight bow instead.

"I am Hibari."

"Nice to meet you," Fon said calmly, him still crouching but ever aware of the seven bodyguards around him. It seemed like the child's father was overestimating himself, if he thought he needed seven guards to protect himself and his child. He wasn't that important yet.

Or maybe he thought he could be. Either arrogance, or righteous paranoia.

He would have to watch this family from now on.

"Hibari, look at the person's face when greeting," the father snapped, voice entirely different from what Fon had been greeted with. Hibari snapped to attention and raised his head, and Fon drew a sharp breath that went unnoticed by the majority.

Because the child's eyes burned, even as everything else he did was tailored to be emotionless. They burned with intelligence, with strength, with potential, and a surprising awareness and wisdom that he would expect of men much older.

But that wasn't what he was amazed by.

This little child's eyes were intense not for any of those reasons.

His eyes burned for _freedom_.

* * *

**Someone asked me why I added the Hibari extra, and I was like OH NO OOPS FORGOT TO ADD THAT DETAIL IN and then I read reviews saying 'why so much monologue' and I agree. I hate monologue. With passion. I was actually kinda bored writing it, but I was desperate and uninspired and TESTESTESTS which I have escaped from!**

**Happy for me? Please say yes!**

**Sorry for this long chapter.**

**It's 50 pages and 19714 words long. Even though it's a rewrite, I hope this is better. And I know people can't rereview a chapter, which I'm kind of disappointed about, so I'm actually not expecting much reviews this time TT_TT but will be glad to say that I severely missed writing during my month of hiatus.**

**During my study, I was literally pining to write this story, because I had all these ideas and I was used to writing a chapter at least once a fortnight from year SEVEN and dude, that break of routine nearly killed me. TT_TT More than the exams.**

**So, I hope you like the rewrite! I'll probably update next week, since I have nothing to do now.**

**If people didn't want to reread it, I will post what changed at the start of the next chapter (I hope I remember, haha) and please, if you want to review you can always do it anonymous, haha. **

**I love you all! No, really.**

**(I don't know if I'm happy with this really - I actually am a bit sleep deprived. I'm going to reply all tomorrow, since I have fun things going on! YAY) I hope you enjoyed!**

**Sorry for making you all read this again. XD**


	65. And it fails

**The promised overview of what happened last chapter (revised) for all who didn't bother!**

**1. Alice finds out that Mukuro is searching for some kind of 'key' and that he really has been reincarnated so many times. It wasn't a metaphor. O_o That meant he must have met the Angels. He must have had a Trial. But... something happened?**

**2. Alice establishes that the plan is going way too well when Fon gets to activate his gift later than Mammon. Hibari does not smash his watch.**

**3. Yuni realises that a lack of romantic feelings for Gamma when she is around six and not physically capable of giving/receiving such love is okay. She then promises to wait for herself to grow up and then decide.**

**3. Byakuran manages to save his watch.**

**4. Tsuna gains a few seconds of feeling the Flames of Rage in the fight with his father. He feels horrible afterwards, and realises the Flames nature (anger and rage at some unchangeable/unfair circumstance). He understands Xanxus, yet is concerned about Hibari (who also gains Flames from getting pissed off) and decides to try and help him through Alice.**

**5. Tsuna recognises Adult Reborn as Reborn**

**6. Bermuda does not get Skull's watches**

* * *

"Well, I hope you're doing fine." I paused, patting the sheets down absent-mindedly. Today had been tough, but Chrome was still in hospital so I was putting in a surprise visit. Tsuna had wanted to visit the hospital anyway – even though Skull didn't get shot through the head this time. Some things you just couldn't change. "The plan I made with Reborn has succeeded surprisingly well so far. I'm feeling kind of scared."

I sat back, trying to see if I was getting a reaction.

"No-one has died so far, or gotten so injured that they couldn't fight. Even Byakuran says he'll be fine in a few days or so… not that you'll care about that, huh?"

He blinked.

Okay, this was getting awkward.

"I'll close the curtains for you! I guess the nurses forgot to close them, huh? Well, they've been busy, after all." I got up, then shuffled back into my seat and impulsively grabbed his hand.

"Reborn told me that Tsuna has realised who he was when he had his curse lifted. That's a step forward. The Vindice should have come tonight and attacked by now, but that was the original plot. As Reborn thought, Bermuda would probably confront Reborn tomorrow. We'll be ready for them though."

He blinked. I sighed, and got up. Moving to switch off the glaring hospital light, I looked back at him sadly.

"Get better soon, Jared. The Varia miss you."

* * *

[Alice Brighteye – Letter to you know who]

_Letter seventeen_

_Wend! Just tell me! Byakuran said something really strange about Mukuro needing to find this key to get peace, and I know you probably know something about it, right? Because Mukuro has killed so many people, and he seems to still be finding this 'key'. So that means you should have one too!_

_Anyway, I find these letters quite cathartic. I just write everything I want to rant about here and nobody will confront me about it! And you all know my secrets anyway, so no brainwork in censoring anything. You're a nice friend, Wend._

_Stop reading, Anise! If you want letters so much, read those emails I send._

_Anyway, I've been springing grand plans! Wish me all the best,_

_And answer my questions. _

_I'm not joking_

_Alice_

* * *

_Letter eighteen_

_Wend? You would have replied already by now. You said before that you didn't have anything to do anyway. Is Anise not giving these to you?_

_Alice_

* * *

_Letter nineteen_

_Wend, I just emailed Anise, and Anise said you're getting them and reading them. It isn't so hard to just write something back, right? Your letters are really interesting you know. They make me feel less stressed. I visited Jared today, if you want to know._

_Alice_

* * *

_Letter twenty_

_Wend! Reply already. If you're offended about the questions I asked a few letters ago, just don't answer them. Tell me about something._

_Alice_

* * *

_Letter twenty-one_

_REPLY_

* * *

_Letter twenty-two_

…_Please? _

_I'll send you some mangos. You like mangos, right?_

* * *

When Reborn and I was going through the plan during our ship back from the Shimon island back to Namimori, Reborn had pointed out something strange. Our plan was mainly to change Tsuna's attitude (so Real Life doesn't end with Tsuna having no character development at all), and to cut short the pointless fighting and injuries. The first part was Reborn's goal, the second mine (of course).

So Reborn had been just reading through my overview of what I knew thoroughly while I kicked back, playing with Leon while answering his occasional question. I was wondering if the waves rocking this ship were making me sea-sick or not. I've never been on a very long sea-trip before.

Just…kinda queasy? Not queasy?

"Alice," he had asked, pointing to a part of the original timeline. "Why do you think Skull was attacked?"

I sighed.

He was treating me like his student. Which was nice, of course, that he considered me that way but…

Yeah. School. One just had to be a little reluctant.

But Reborn didn't ask questions over anything.

Why Skull indeed?

"He's the weakest Arcobaleno?" I said, saying the most obvious answer, which Reborn gave me an irritated glance for. Okay, expecting more.

"He's allied with the Shimon, who recently tied with Tsuna and got beaten?"

Reborn nodded.

"Exactly it. By the time Bermuda targets Skull and the Shimon, they would have already regained the strength that lead to the collapse of Vongola security. The Vindice are strong, but the Shimon aren't _weak_, Alice."

I glanced at his fedora, slowly sitting up.

"Why didn't they attack Fon?" I asked the air, as I watched Leon scuttle back to the table.

Reborn smiled.

"Exactly. No matter how you think about it, Fon's team is the weakest. He wouldn't have had a chance of breaking watches either in his effort to take over, since he only has the Boss watch active. So why not Fon?"

I blinked, before rehashing info. What did the Shimon lack that the others had?

Well, Vongola and the Cavallone were obvious. They were loaded, two of the strongest Mafia families. Yuni too, since she was Giglio Nero. CEDEF, Mukuro, VARIA, and Hibari…

Well, CEDEF and the VARIA were affiliations with the Vongola, so they were out. Mukuro, if thought about, had established a little network of strong allies and enemies – anyone who collaborated or opposed him would probably have a lot of attention in the Mafia world. Which left Hibari and the Shimon.

They didn't have strong affiliates, did they? Shimon were Mafia pariahs (until recently) so… while the Shimon were weak in presence, that didn't mean anything, did it?

"Both Shimon and Hibari don't have strong affiliations, I think. So if one was going to target a team, they would target the two. It would anger the general Mafia less."

Reborn nodded, stroking Leon. He'd abandoned me for Reborn's fluffy hair. Traitor.

But to be fair, Reborn's hair did seem very comfortable to sleep in...

"That was my reasoning too. If you say Bermuda targeted Shimon, I just guess he wanted to deal with less opponents later."

For some reason, that didn't really fit quite right. Something felt strange with that reasoning, but…

"It is the most plausible one," I finally answered, after wrestling with words for awhile (what? Just because I've been getting better at talking doesn't mean I was good at negotiations. There was a reason why I was one of the Brighteyes accepting requests instead of negotiating with other legal and illegal organisations).

Reborn looked at me with sharp eyes.

"You don't think that's the reason?"

Urgh. My point exactly. I wasn't neutral enough.

I shook my head, glancing over my own notes, deciding that lamenting over my lack of verbose words could come later. Why indeed? Hibari would have been the better choice for takeover, in nearly every way.

Now, as I was dragging myself over to Hibari's house at five in the morning, I was reminded of that moment. Really. What was it about Hibari that made the Vindice avoid him?

I smirked

His surprising skill and potential? His rugged good looks? His amazing and sociable personality?

I rang the doorbell. Hibari slammed the door open with a scowl. There was an extra long pause where I just kind of deadpanned at the door, and Hibari just stood there expectantly with this 'it's-too-early-and-if-you-weren't-you-I-would-already-have-killed-you' face.

Ha.

I smirked.

It was definitely the third. That amazing and sociable personality.

(Still, I made a mental note to check up on his background. For the fourth time, or something. I… probably would never get around doing it. You know. Procrastination)

I stretched my face eeeextra wide in an effort to smile. Giving him the happy beam, a small wave and a chirpy, "Hi, Hibari!" I pulled out my non-existent morning person just to make him more annoyed.

Ha! Serves him right. Grey woke me up at four in the morning. I wanted to spread the misery.

(To tell the truth, I told him to wake me up that early, and Grey is probably tired too but… _why_. Why did I have to guard a main character of a Japanese SHOUNEN magazine? Now that I was nearly at the end, I could at least have the privilege of pissing off one of the most homicidal, dangerous and strongest characters in the series, right?)

Hibari was not impressed.

"Hn." It was the 'hn' that indicated that he was pissed, but expectant because I wasn't one to go running around ringing doorbells in the early morning.

Hibari waited at the doorway at least, and didn't slam the door in my face. It counted for something right?

I let the painful smile fade from my face. It had been Grey's idea anyway. To smile and be more sociable. Sadly, I didn't think it was working.

Heh.

"Hibari, I'm sorry for disrupting you before the sun rises," (here he gave a raised eyebrow and a 'hn' that interpreted as 'you think?' I just deadpanned) "but we believe there's going to be a major battle at Tsuna's house very soon, and I believe you joined this fight for the promise of fighting stronger opponents?"

I fidgeted a little. The morning air was a bit chilly for my tastes. I took a deep sniff, sniffing again before just pulling a tissue out of my pocket and blowing my nose before continuing. Hibari just kind of sniffed at me (without the snot) at my behaviour.

I could imagine what he was thinking.

'How _dare_ you use a rumpled tissue from your pocket and blow your nose on it? Such atrocious hygiene cannot be tolerated! I will _bite you to_…

Yeah. I'll just interrupt that thought.

"Well, now you can battle. You want to join?"

I tried to send a winning (constipated) smile.

Hibari, who had been slowly straightening throughout the 'you wanna fight strong opponents' speech gave a smirk, before going in and coming out a second later, his disciplinary jacket around his shoulders. His arms were free, as usual.

Surprisingly, he didn't protest or throw a hissy fit that he was being led to do something. Nor did Kusakabe come and block Hibari from fighting alone.

I wonder where the rest of the Disciplinary committee went. Hibari could easily muster a few underlings to fight with him…

But then I thought of that golden afternoon, and smiled.

Hibari cared for his subordinates (enough to show them his less violent side). He would know that his followers would be way over their heads.

It kind of makes me wonder why Hibari lets such weaker people join his committee, but decided to stop wondering about it.

Hibari cares.

That's all that matters.

Grey was yawning when he saw me and straightened up. I kind of winced.

"Grey, sorry for pushing you like this. You can go sleep after the next few days. It'll be over then, I think."

Hibari visibly took note of this, his eyes flicking towards me before sliding into the back seat. I sat with him, since sitting in the front would (maybe) offend him.

I guess? Positions of power and whatnot?

"No problem, Miss. It's my job, after all. You feel like a grand-daughter to me." He chuckled, his thick moustache wobbling, as it didn't get trimmed today. Not that I cared (I wouldn't care if he wore a chicken suit every day and died his hair hot pink) but_ he_ did so…

"Thank you, Grey."

He started turning down from Hibari's street back to the familiar ones, the wide, four lane one, which turned into the suburbs after a few streets and stop lights. Turn left, enter the suburbs again, turn right and then it would be Tsuna's house.

It took around fifteen minutes, so I sat back and indulged in the silence. Grey had never explicitly stated that we seemed like family. It was so… fuzzy. Warming.

I didn't know how to describe that weird fluffy feeling in my chest. I've always wondered about that 'warmth that bloomed in Yamamoto's bosom as he stared at Ayame who tenderly, gently pruned her beloved flowers that her dead mother had left her…' (of course, the romance novel Yamamoto and not real life Yamamoto. I would be rather disturbed if Yamamoto did do something like that), and maybe this was the same?

I'd never had a grandfather before. Grandmama's husband died half a year before my birth from a mix of injuries and old age after he came back a war (they never specified which), and my father's parents died long before that. So no 'grandpapas' in my life.

It felt… right, somehow. Grey was kind of filling this niche in my family that I've never had before. No sense of guilt from betraying, or forgetting.

I didn't realise I had a smile on my face until I realised Hibari was staring at me, a contemplative look on his face.

I immediately flattened my expression (since Hibari thought emotions were 'herbivorish' right? I still needed him to cooperate) but at that Hibari just frowned and looked out the window. I waited in a few terse minutes of silence. He didn't do anything.

He let me off the hook.

…

So Hibari didn't think loving family was something herbivorish?

Heh.

I found the smile coming back again.

* * *

Tsuna's house was still dim, even though I doubted that Iemitsu was actually asleep with an enemy team so nearby (even if it was his own son who wouldn't even have thought of foul play, let alone act on it, Reborn was plenty dangerous on his own) and it seemed like the only shadow moving around was the very familiar shadow of Nana in the kitchen.

It was five-thirty in the morning.

Oh Heaven. How did Nana end up with Iemitsu again?

I turned around, surprised that Hibari hadn't gotten out of the car yet. Bending down, I was just about to call out to him when He got out of the car with a huff, annoyed for no reason I could understand until he turned around… and I saw Fon perching on a very unwilling arm.

I blinked.

"Uh. Hi, Fon? Why didn't I notice you in the car?"

Fon smiled.

"I was resting on Hibari's roof when I saw you come and ask Hibari for a fight so I hopped onto the roof of the car. Not that I do not trust your judgement, but will this prove to be too much for Hibari to protect his watch?"

Fon bowed politely, even as Hibari swept a wild swing at him, hopping politely from Hibari's arm to the car and onto my shoulder. I gulped, watching Hibari's (extremely pissed off) eyes rest on… me.

"Hibari will be a great ally for this battle," I replied instead, inching my way towards Tsuna's house.

Hibari's eyes were _evil_. Evil, I tell you!

They were all slanted up and glary and…and his grey eyes didn't help matters. (I just noticed eyes a heck lot more after my own got mutated. Hibari's were all hard and steel and… scary. Yeah. I admit I'm an herbivore)

When we rung the doorbell, Nana was really pleasantly surprised to see us. She probably recognised Hibari from her mothers day party, but her eyes really lit up when she saw me.

"My, Alice! And Hibari, was it? Please, come in! You're here for Tsuna, aren't you? You're a bit early so you might need to wait, so please come in and help yourselves." She stepped aside to let us in, although Fon had hopped back to Hibari (he was either suicidal or very brave. I opted for both) so they were having a one-sided glare fight. Guess who was the one glaring.

Nana continued down the hallway, trusting us to close the door. Hibari was behind me, so I just stepped inside, as Nana continued chattering (softer now).

"You and the boys are always together, so I was wondering if you felt left out, Alice, since they've been sleeping over for the past few nights. Then I realised that you might have felt out of place because you're a girl!"

Nana gave a little giggle, leading the way to the kitchen and pulling out some chairs. I had to backtrack to peacekeep between Fon and Hibari a little first though (they were about to demolish the shoe rack! Again! It was as if every time Hibari visited Tsuna, he had to demolish a shoe rack. Or a door. Or, I winced, the pot plant next to it) but we got settled down in front of Nana who was flipping pancakes.

"You could have still slept over though, Alice!" Nana gave me a wink over her shoulder. "I have a girls room that Bianchi uses. You could have hung out here, and slept with Bianchi! This house has a lot of rooms, you know!"

I opened my mouth to reply, but got cut off instead.

"And I haven't thanked you either for helping me with the shopping bags the other day. Thank you, Alice!" Nana fully turned around grinning, and I couldn't help but bow a little back.

"You're too kind, Nana. The boys should have helped you bring your morning shopping anyway."

Nana tutted.

"You're too formal, Alice. Smile a bit more! And I know the one thing that helps." She turned around, heating two pans at once before starting to whip some eggs. "Eating a big, healthy breakfast. You're too thin."

Now that was a comment I've never heard before. I was getting nice and soft under Grey's cooking.

I shrugged.

My aunts used to say it too. I guess it was a motherly thing.

We watched Nana. Fon, sipping some tea. Me, appreciating the atmosphere. And who knew what Hibari was thinking? He was just staring at Nana with this faint reminiscing look, if I used my Reading Stoic Faces to the _very_ highest setting.

So there we were.

I was racking my brains for reasons to make Nana leave the house. In the manga, Iemitsu lost his Boss watch because the Vindice had targeted Nana. If Nana left (even if it was only for an hour) then everything would probably go according to plan.

Yeah.

'To plan'.

To tell the truth, this was the trickiest bit. And the most uncertain.

After about five minutes, Reborn came bounding into the room.

"Ciaossu, Mama!" He chirped, already a glass of espresso in his hand. I scowled.

Tch. Morning people.

"Alice, come with me?" Reborn gave me a winning smile. "I want to play on the trampoline in the backyard!"

Nana gave a happy gasp, turning from her second omelette.

"Yes, go play. You've never wanted to play on the trampoline before, Reborn! I'm glad you're finally allowing yourself to play with Alice!"

I smirked.

Reborn gave me a warning look.

"Of course, Mama! Breakfast smells really nice." He chirped, slugging down his coffee a little violently before hopping on my shoulder. Fon gave us an inquiring look, and I nodded at him in reassurance. The suspicion didn't leave his eyes though.

Hibari just didn't care, and stared out the window looking utterly bored.

(Probably wondering where the battle I promised went. But he didn't fight in front of children and motherly women/girls so… he should be fine here. I think.)

"Alice, let's go!" Reborn cheered on my shoulder, and I followed his demands at my own pace. Which was a bit too slow for his liking, because he then twisted my ear. Discreetly.

"Ow, what was that for?" I hissed, walking a bit faster.

"You were laughing at me when Mama was cooking," he said primly, nonchalantly adjusting his fedora. I scowled, but stomped to the backyard and stopped in front of the trampoline.

"Well, oh great Reborn. Want to jump on the trampoline?"

"Maybe one day. First, have you successfully contacted Yuni?"

I nodded. "I phoned them yesterday night, after you all left Yuni's team for the hospital. Byakuran thinks that although his arm is a bit twisted," Reborn snorted at 'a bit' and I wondered exactly how wounded Byakuran got protecting the Boss watch, "and said he'll be in fighting condition this morning, although it might be less than optimal. They will arrive at around five forty-five in the morning, which would be around… eight minutes from now."

Reborn nodded.

"Byakuran's medical abilities are greater than any current doctor on Earth. If he's saying this, it should be the truth."

I gave a shrug.

"I'm just surprised that you predicted Bermuda's moves so successfully, Reborn. How did you know that he wouldn't attack in the late evening again, just like before? He could have, you know."

Reborn smirked.

"Last time, all the Arcobaleno were in the hospital having a meeting over Skull who had been shot straight through the head. Bermuda would have been searching for Skull for longer than a while – by then, most of the battlers wouldn't have been tired from their battles with each other. If I was them, I would regroup, and take time to create a battle plan before attacking."

He paused to let me sneeze and sniff into a tissue. I took the chance to talk (through a blocked nose. It was the most annoying feeling too, that tickle that you just couldn't reach).

"But why early morning? Why not wait until the next battle comes and attack when the groups are weak again?"

"Too risky," Reborn shook his head, and to my utter (inner) amusement, he actually started jumping on the trampoline.

I turned that around in my head.

Then sneezed.

I should have worn that coat Grey had given me! Why was I so stupid? Damn it. The sun still hadn't risen yet? I glared balefully at the sky before returning to my musing.

Well, the representative battles were a timed thing, and also eliminatory. The less teams there were, the less watches to steal. Skull's had disappeared, and it was obvious some teams were dominating others. In the next battle, who knew if the winner could be decided just like that?

The more time dragged the more risky.

Which should have been obvious to me from the start. I sighed.

"I get it. Though I'm surprised I was right to predict that Checkerface didn't arrange the third battle right at midnight."

Reborn gave me a cutesy smile (that made me inwardly cringe) as he backflipped on the trampoline. "Your reasoning was sound. After Bermuda came in, he wanted the battles to end as quickly as possible. Bermuda knows the truth, so him joining just means this representative battle was a failure, and he should start nurturing the new Arcobaleno through the 'Fated Day' instead."

I gave a little unhappy sigh, looking at the grey clouds that hung over Namimori. The sun had been shining in the manga. Even the weather can change, huh?

"I hope our plan works, Reborn," I said instead of all the questions and doubts and fears and hopes that I felt. This session had been all about me, anyway, trying to reassure myself that the plan would work.

There was no-one who would listen to me anyway. No one except Reborn knew the plan, and Reborn was much too focused a person to dwell on such stuff.

Yamamoto was right. I thought too much.

But still. I can't help it!

"Me too, Alice."

Reborn gave me a quick smile, before hopping to my shoulder in a show of camaraderie. I inwardly laughed. Nothing gives a boost of confidence like the strongest assassin in the world sitting on your shoulder. Distantly the doorbell rang.

"Yuni-chan! You're so small!" Nana exclaimed.

* * *

Surprisingly, it was Lambo who finally persuaded Nana to go on a shopping trip, accompanied by Fuuta, I-pin, Lambo and Bianchi (the latter who gave everyone in the room a surprisingly sombre nod to show she would protect them all).

Even Nana couldn't whip out food for twenty people from a ten-people budget, so she was flustered (in a way that made everyone present feel guilty) before Lambo, whining that he didn't have grape candy, made her go and head off towards Namimori shopping centre.

Two seconds after Nana had closed the door, Iemitsu was downstairs staring at us.

"What are you rival teams doing here?" Iemitsu gave a tired smirk. "I'm still paying this home's loan off, you know."

Byakuran gave a quiet chuckle.

"Saving your money for your retirement, eh, Iemitsu?" He was twisted delicately over the kitchen table, sleeping on one arm, the other placed on the table in a very awkward looking angle.

But whatever worked best for him, of course. Maybe that angle gave him better healing prowess? I don't know.

"Well…"

That was around the time all three boys stumbled down the stairs.

Tsuna blinked, flanked by Gokudera (who was scowling at all the people congregated in the kitchen) and Yamamoto, who was smiling happily at me.

Tsuna was busy gaping at the motley ensemble (_Yuni, Gamma, Byakuran, and a few of their Family… Alice! With Reborn and there's Dad and Colonello with Basil behind the wall… Fon. Wait, does that mean Hibari is here? And is that Dino outside the door?)_ Yamamoto gave a cheery yell. "Alice! We haven't seen you for days!"

I waved back.

"Yo, Yamamoto. I think we were both a little busy." I flatly replied. He gave a happy laugh, and continued down the stairs, passing the kitchen doorway (to my surprise) to greet the person at the door. "Hello, Dino! Come in! Everyone seems to be here already, haha."

Dino came in, trailed sheepishly by some of his subordinates and Romario.

"Hi Tsuna, Reborn!" He took a step back when he saw how many people were crammed into the kitchen. "Alice? Hibari? Aren't you… Byakuran?"

I quickly stood up before the suspicion (from anyone who has lived with Mafia) started to set in. Reborn piped up from my shoulder.

"They wanted to discuss an alliance…" Reborn started, while Fon and Yuni looked surprised. Yuni, after a few seconds, played along.

"Yes, we were thinking—"

There was this large crash from outside, before the air was absolutely _filled_ with obnoxious laughter.

Familiar, obnoxious laughter.

Obnoxious laughter that shouldn't have _been here_.

All the people collectively rushed to the back yard, where there was this humongous armoured octopus flailing around with Skull on top of it.

"Reborn!" He shouted, waving his little fist and laughing through his helmet. "I have foiled your plans to sabotage my representative team and escaped from where you had put me! You have forgotten I am not called the Immortal Stuntsman for nothing! I've found where you hid my watches as well." Skull gave a laugh, shaking his head. Probably glad he'd _finally_ gotten to beat Reborn or something. "Under Tsuna's bed! How ingenious of you. But not enough!"

I heard Tsuna gulp, and squeak a _what?_

"So now I've become smarter, and only brought three watches along!"

He waved, showing off Enma, Adelheid and Julie. "I've hid the other three where you will _never_ find it."

He started laughing again. I stared at that giant, purple octopus in the backyard with horror. Hibari sniffed disdainfully before raising an eyebrow at me saying (with a hn) that _this_ was the strong opponent? Reborn just face-palmed.

Indeed.

All our plans ruined.

Note to myself:

Next time factor in idiocy.

* * *

One second, Skull was laughing.

The next, Bermuda on the shoulder of a tall cloaked Vindice had teleported to Skull's side, held a gun to his helmet and shot clean through.

And Skull fell, so slowly, in comparison to the speed that Bermuda grabbed the watch off Skull and put it on his own wrist. And he ignored Skull, as the little baby-sized guy fell to the ground, his helmet already filling with blood.

Everyone was too shocked.

Heck, I was shocked, and I had expected something like this to happen. It was Bermuda's slow smile that spurred _me_ into action. I blinked, stepping forward, slowly, too slowly for my taste—

Tsuna dove forward, his hands already sparking with beautiful, clear orange flames as he sped those few metres and successfully caught Skull before he hit the ground. Then he slowed down, before softly, ever so softly, put him down on a tentacle Skull's octopus had offered.

And. He. _Glared._

"_Who are you?"_ Tsuna said, the calm face he always seemed to have when he was in Hyper Dying Will twisted in anger. At this, Yamamoto jerked in tandem with Gokudera, and they both fluidly changed into fighting poses. Gokudera was already calculating how to get to Tsuna – he was in one of the most vulnerable positions. Alone, with Enma, Adelheid and Julie a few metres away, and us… reinforcements across the yard.

It would take two seconds to cross, at full speed probably half a second for some.

Too long.

Gokudera gritted his teeth, and I moved to his side to hold his elbow.

I shook my head. No, not yet. Gokudera shot me a look, challenging me, before Yamamoto who saw me, grabbed Gokudera's other elbow.

Yamamoto had remembered, our warning in that little room at school. Thank goodness.

Bermuda was here for Reborn. Not Tsuna.

And so Reborn watched him for me, and I trusted for those few seconds he had got my back. Gokudera making rash moves would provoke something I'd rather not face now.

The rest of the CEDEF had aligned themselves with Iemitsu, Colonello glaring at them, staring at Skull in concern. Basil was talking rapidly into the phone, while I could hear Dino muttering away to his subordinates;

'Yes, we need emergency medical attention right now, do not alert authorities, repeat, do not alert authorities…'

'Guys, anyone who is an illusionist and not wearing a watch go and set up a perimeter _now_. I don't care how many, gather as many as you can. Try and cover this fight, and escort civilians away. We don't want any civilian casualties…'

'Be careful Boss...'

A few people slunk away into the background.

Bermuda watched all of this with utter… bemusement? Yes, it was bemusement colouring his voice as he answered Tsuna.

"You're on the path to growing like the first Vongola. Indeed, you've already grown so much. Isn't that right… Reborn?"

Bermuda turned his head to look at Reborn, who merely blinked in response.

"Yes, you're truly remarkable. I haven't come to fight you all today. My name is Bermuda von Vichtenstein. I have joined the representative battle."

"Hey!" Colonello yelled, stepping forward. "You're not allo—"

"Just because I am not here to fight you presume you're safe. How shallow of all of you." He cut off Colonello, Bermuda's voice so callous, uncaring, even as he called out to his fellow comrades to "Come out."

Everyone tensed, as they saw three more Vindice come out of the shadows. Yuni was quickly ushered behind Gamma and Byakuran, hidden behind all her active family members, even as I stared, as hard as I could, at the figures. If I looked close enough, I could still see the vestiges of black flame licking their bandages. Bermuda turned towards the three Shimon present, who had approached Tsuna to back him up. Skull's octopus had retreated, far enough away from the fight so that Skull couldn't get injured anymore.

But nowhere is far enough away for Vindice.

The Black Flame… the Flame of Night.

The power to accelerate, teleport. To travel great distances by creating a warp hole. A Flame of hatred, a Flame that can bear the relentlessness of time… the Flame that allowed Daemon Spade to survive for four-hundred years.

It was a horrifyingly powerful Flame.

There was a reason why Bermuda could be considered the strongest Arcobaleno ever existed.

He _invented_ that Flame out of sheer hatred and force of will.

"You three wear Skull's watches, which means they are mine. Are you going to give them up willingly?"

Enma just stared up at Bermuda, mute in face of such a sudden, violent appearance. And Bermuda took that as a negative, and with a flick of his hand two Vindice were upon them. Enma immediately activated his gravity Flames, while Adelheid covered all their watches up with Glacier Flames. Julie was running forward, being a bit farther away than the rest, and I stood transfixed, watching when there was a high, frightened shout to my immediate right.

"Byakuran! Gamma!"

"On it, Princess," they both said, sprinting across the lawn where Tsuna… Tsuna was _burning. _His Flames were creating a whirlwind of orange Flame, trying to box in the Vindice who tried to approach Enma. Slowly, Enma started floating as his own Gravity Flames started to glow.

High above the battle, Bermuda, still on the tall Vindice's shoulder, ordered the third one to try 'thin the battle'.

Get rid of the competition.

After all, _they_ didn't have watches. They weren't restricted from spontaneous fighting.

Next to me, Gokudera and Yamamoto ran forward, just as Hibari leapt across the clearing and directly challenged Bermuda, Fon following. The CEDEF had intercepted the third Vindice, with no visible use, as the third just flickered away to confront Hibari while Bermuda teleported… straight in front of us.

"I've got business with you… Reborn," Bermuda said bending over, his face to Reborn's, mine to the tall Vindice's collarbone.

Dino shouted, and pushed me out of the way so he could face them instead.

"Go, Alice! Get to Tsuna!"

I started running, and Dino's shout had caught Tsuna's attention. I knew I could be pretty fast if I wanted to, and in those few, precious seconds I had crossed half the yard.

Basil crashed into the wall behind me, flung by the Vindice that they were battling, trying to protect the Shimon

Iemitsu charged forward, strong, compact, swift and jabbed at a chin that swiftly disappeared into air

Enma, his red eyes blazing as he manipulated balls of gravity multiplying them from two, to seven, to ten and yelled as he flung them

Hibari, tonfa gleaming, eyes narrowed as one of the Vindice flickered to him and nearly stabbed his shoulder

And Tsuna, a few metres away, staring at us both and seeing something behind us in horror.

The chill that accompanied the Vindice suddenly washed over me from behind, and I could feel Bermuda's breath on the back of my neck. I tried to keep running, I truly did. But something stopped me. I… couldn't move. My breath hitched.

"You're invited to join me… Reborn. And in return, I'll tell you the truth about the Arcobaleno." He snickered, a light, breathy sound.

"I'm not telling lies, right… little Brighteye?"

Then there was this sensation of pulling, from the spot near my shoulder as Reborn was sucked into a warp hole, not resisting as we had agreed. He kept a vice grip on me, and soon, I had touched the black flame and was getting sucked in as well.

I could hear Tsuna yelling.

"NO, _REBORN! ALI—"_

And distantly, I heard the cry '_Juudaime!'_

* * *

It was dark. I was lying on something lumpy, and I really didn't like what my brain was connecting it to. From those lessons in biology with my third spartan teacher, it seemed like something…

I heard muttering from the side. "Owowowow… Where… are we?"

Tsuna! He had made it after all. I gave out a sigh of relief, and tried to move, myself. It was a little hard though. I think I bruised my arm quite badly. There was a bit of silence, before Tsuna gave a shriek. I winced. Wow, that was high for a pubescent boy.

"HIIIE! A SKELETON!"

Oh.

Ew.

I was lying on what I thought it was, after all. I instantly got up, regardless of any bruising. There was a shuffle, before a little cone of light was directed to my left.

"Oh, Tsuna. You're here too?" Came Reborn's squeaky voice, and Tsuna's silhouette shielded his eyes.

"Reborn?!"

I imagined Reborn's smirk, before the light was directed downwards.

"Funny huh?" Reborn merely replied. "They've even got pacifiers on," he murmured, nearly to himself as he directed the light to the neck of the skeleton. There, if I squinted was a stone pacifier. Reborn's face was grim, before he started scanning the floor. "Start looking, Tsuna. Alice should be here too."

Tsuna started, obviously so relieved he had found Reborn that he had (kind of) forgotten about me. He immediately started worrying and yelling.

"Alice? ALICE!"

"Quiet down, there might be other people in here. Like Bermuda. And who knows, she might be unconscious."

"_Unconscious?"_ Tsuna squeaked, before he started scrambling around trying to find a glimpse of me in the pitch black. I had been steadily trying to recover my voice, (shock and all – but Brighteyes recovered from mental effects fast. Anyway, that black portal was absolutely terrifying) but slowly found it.

"Tsuna, stop shouting," I managed in a normal voice. It was much softer than I expected, but in those echoes and silence, it was pretty easy to hear well… anything.

"Alice! You're alright!"

I shrugged, stepping carefully over the skeletons and rubbing the back of my head. I think I bumped it there…

"It's fine."

Tsuna gave a garbled howl of frustration. "How can you be so relaxed? I was worried about you! Reborn too! You're both so… so _chill!"_

Reborn jumped up to Tsuna's shoulder, settling his Leon lamp on his knees.

"I let myself get sucked in."

Tsuna, who just drew his breath in to continue his verbal rampage deflated.

"Huh? You did?"

Reborn nodded, his face serious as he scanned the walls, his eyes never actually meeting Tsuna's, or mine.

"Bermuda said 'you're invited to join me' and said something about telling me the truth of the Arcobaleno. So I let him pull me in." Reborn stated matter-of-factly, shifting the light, so it was on me. "Isn't that right, Alice?

I nodded. "Basically, yeah."

"The secrets of…" Tsuna frowned. "You mean there are actually things you don't know about?!" Tsuna was brimming with questions – you could tell. Probably from the fact that his reality shattered, realising Reborn was actually not a baby.

Reborn's reply was solemn.

"I know nothing."

…Cue awkward silence. Tsuna tried desperately to find another topic, and his eyes rested on me.

"But Reborn, you dragged Alice into this!"

I gave a tiny smile, and walked forward to pat Tsuna's shoulder. "It's fine. It couldn't be helped. Battles are chaotic things, especially when ambushed."

Maybe I shouldn't have said that.

Tsuna's face had paled.

"Battles… Oh my gosh, Reborn, we left all the people battling up there!" His loud voice echoed around the large cavern. From the echoes… there was a wall on our right, and one maybe very, very far away on the left. "They need us! The Vindice are going to kill them! Yamamoto, Gokudera…"

"Relax, Tsuna." Reborn ordered. "We can't do anything about it now. We have to trust them."

Tsuna was trying to breathe. I reached out to shake his arm.

"Come on, Tsuna. They're strong."

Tsuna shook his head.

"No, you don't get it, Alice! You didn't fight them. I fought one for a minute or so. Without Enma, or Gokudera and Yamamoto afterwards, I wouldn't have survived. You need to team up or you would die, and I _abandoned them_!"

I frowned. Reborn took this into his own hands.

"Tsuna, you didn't abandon them. You trusted them to fight the Vindice when you flew to fight with us. You're supporting us now."

I nodded firmly.

"Now at least we have a close-ranged fighter just in case Bermuda comes here. I think he whispered something like 'you're coming with me' to Reborn. I… don't think we're alone, Tsuna."

Remembering the chill, the breath, and Bermuda's bandaged face. I didn't even realise my fingers had tightened around Tsuna's sleeve.

Tsuna smiled.

"It's okay, Alice. You're a strong fighter, and Reborn here I saw transform into this totally cool and strong guy. We'll all fight together when the time comes, okay?"

I let go, slightly ashamed of myself.

I should have been the one consoling Tsuna. It had always been that way.

Reborn had been looking at Tsuna with this slightly proud look in his eyes. Yes, Tsuna was growing up fine, underneath Reborn's tutelage. One could say Reborn was his best friend, his tutor, his role model, his father, and Family member all rolled into one.

What Reborn and Tsuna had… was truly special.

Reborn had focused his Leon-light onto what looked like a small hole in the wall on the right.

"Looks like that's the only entrance. Let's go," Reborn said, starting off by jumping off Tsuna's shoulder and walking by himself.

"Uh… okay. This is creepy," Tsuna muttered, sticking close to Reborn and his light. I started trailing behind before Tsuna quickly glanced around, saw me dragging my feet and dragged (thankfully) my unbruised arm so we were all walking side by side.

Tsuna suddenly froze.

"Hm?"

Reborn paused, his light swung to Tsuna's face. He looked scared, as he kept staring at a patch of wall. I looked, even as I knew what was one there.

Murals. A whole wall full of murals of the 'Fated Day' and 'The Representative Battle'.

"W-why is there graffiti on this wall?" Tsuna asked, staring at the picture that the Leon-light had focused on. A picture of a shadow man with Checkers on his hat, his face smiling with his hands opened wide, welcoming the seven shadows in front of him to come closer.

Reborn peered closer. "Looks like a mural."

I stepped back, letting Reborn and Tsuna figure it out. Although I had mentioned murals in my explanation, I didn't say what they were. Reborn had been irritated with me, saying that 'it might be important' but ultimately Reborn was going to refuse Bermuda's offer, so really, what were in the murals didn't matter at all.

Tsuna gave a startled exclamation.

"A checkered hat! Is that Checker Face?"

Reborn frowned, as he slowly connected the dots. His voice was tight, when he tapped Leon with a finger. "Make the light wider, Leon," he asked, so blunt and straightforward that one would never guess that his body-language all teetered on 'nervous'.

Of course, he would merely say that he was in anticipation later on. Real men were never nervous. Duh.

Leon widened the light, and Reborn moved the light left a bit, where there was Checker Face leering over the seven shadows, before the next mural showed a bright light, Checker Face gone, and the seven shadows had become seven children forced with pacifiers. Tsuna was still interpreting them.

"There are pictures here too… the middle one, a mountain?"

Reborn was silent, before he lowered Leon a bit. Burdened by memories.

"The Fated Day."

"The Fated Day?" Tsuna asked, turning his head to me for confirmation before he noticed I was standing slightly behind them… yet again. He gave me a little, 'why do you do this' look and just pulled me up, as he expectantly looked at Reborn.

Reborn managed to pull a deadpan from somewhere, hopping back onto Tsuna's shoulder. Even I noticed it took effort, so to Tsuna it must have been as obvious as bark on a tree.

"What, you don't know about it, Tsuna? How much do you know?"

Tsuna gave an exasperated shout.

"How much? I don't know anything! All you taught me was that the Arcobaleno are the baby forms of the 7 strongest! I didn't even know that you literally meant 'baby forms' until yesterday!"

Reborn paused, his eyes still trained on the mural. Of the seven babies, trapped in that bright light on that mountain, shackled with pacifiers forever.

"Alright then, let me explain. Like you see in that right picture, we were gathered up by Checker Face." Reborn swung his light back to the first mural that Tsuna noticed, where Checker Face was luring them in.

"Huh?"

I gently shook Tsuna's arm to capture his attention.

"Checker Face arranged for the adult Arcobaleno to meet, Tsuna. Before they were cursed."

Reborn nodded, and continued. "The seven of us were tasked with a job. As strangers, we gathered up in a designated location. Then we got our first mission. The reward was top class. We cleared it without any trouble, of course," he recounted almost robotically. As if he had replayed these memories, over, and over again. Tsuna was silent, but his hand was squeezing my arm really tightly.

I let him. For the first time, Reborn was letting him into his secrets.

They were becoming more equal, now.

Reborn continued, his voice so uncharacteristically flat. No emotion except bitter mocking at himself. For believing something so good could possibly be true.

"And when we did, we were tasked with a new mission with an even higher reward. At that time, we weren't worried about money, but becoming the finest in the world. We were entranced with the fun of our jobs and kept taking on new ones. There were so many types of missions too, from guarding important people to assassination to acquiring military secrets, we never got bored. And so our teamwork strengthened, after clearing an extremely difficult mission, we were given our last mission. To climb a mountain and search for treasure."

And looking at the current Arcobaleno (sans Colonello and subbed in Lal, barring Yuni) I could see that happening. Each had their own specialities, were the top of their field. To be challenged was to improve, to become even better. And knowing the Arcobaleno like I do now, they wouldn't have stopped.

They would have kept going, and going, and going.

There was nothing else to do, for people like them.

Tsuna's grip didn't slacken, though he did voice out his question.

"That's… the mountain?"

Reborn ignored him. Or maybe, he didn't hear him.

Memories of regret were the hardest memories to forget, after all.

"But checker face had a purpose for all this. When we reached the summit, we were bathed in a mysterious light and cursed. The next thing I knew, I was like this. And had a pacifier I couldn't remove was around my neck." Reborn briefly touched the glowing yellow pacifier around his neck, before letting his hand drop away.

"You mean, he tricked you? It was all a trap laid by Checker Face?" Tsuna asked, finally able to swallow the whole story as it is. After understanding that yes, Reborn was an adult trapped forever as a toddler.

(something that, I believe, canon Tsuna never really fully understood. This Tsuna knew. And he hurt for Reborn, for Reborn had given him the world)

Reborn finally responded to Tsuna. "Yeah. Since we communicated with him via letters, we couldn't find him afterwards. Incidentally, at the time, Colonello wasn't one of the I Prescelti Sette, but followed us. He covered up for Lal right at the last moment and got cursed himself. And so, Colonello became an Arcobaleno, and Lal, who was only partially touched by the light, became partially cursed."

Reborn shrugged. He'd told his story.

Tsuna stared at the paintings now, fully understanding what was happening.

"So that's what happened between them…" Colonello, Lal. Verde, Mammon, Reborn, Skull and Yuni's grandma, Luce. That's how, although some of them seemed like they couldn't ever get along (Fon, Mammon. Reborn, Verde, etcetera) they were still close-knit. Still always, for each other, kind of held a 'we'll be there for you' type of vibe'.

Even if sometimes they wanted to kill each other instead.

Tsuna sweat-dropped, and I watched all this flicker through his face trying to muffle a small laugh. His grip slackened, and I shook him off.

Tsuna was such a normal, little kid.

Reborn however, had just been scanning the whole room , and just decided to make Leon brighten up his light to fill the whole wall. Tsuna nearly gasped, as he saw what else the wall hid.

Reborn's voice was frustrated as he scanned through the paintings, all in different styles, all saying the same, two stories. "I don't get it, though. The fated day is drawn all over this wall. But the rainbow representative war also appears just as much."

Reborn glanced at me.

I nodded.

"Yes, these are pictures of what you call The Fated Day, and the Representative War that we're in right now."

"What does it mean, Alice?" Reborn asked from Tsuna's shoulder. Tsuna looked at my, confused.

I guess he was wondering how I knew even more than Reborn.

"Tsuna, I'm a Brighteye. I know things, but I'm not in the liberty to tell them, most of the time."

Tsuna opened his mouth to respond, before a bright light flooded from behind us, from the doorway we had been heading towards but totally forgot about as Reborn reminisced.

"Then let me explain. This… is a cycle."

Bermuda's voice penetrated the darkness, and I slowly turned, blocking my eyes from being blinded. Tsuna turned around more quickly than I did, and had to shield his eyes a second later, though he shifted in front of me and Reborn had hopped in front of Tsuna.

We were all trying to protect each other.

"Bermuda!" Tsuna yelled, his eyes gaining a harder glint.

Bermuda's voice continued, his voice echoing, ominous in its promise of truth.

"Murals have been left on that wall by others in order to record their 'fated days' and 'representative wars'. Squeezing out the last of their withering lives. Now that you're here, I'll just tell you everything."

Bermuda turned to Tsuna and me, dismissing Tsuna as unimportant.

"It was unexpected that Sawada Tsunayoshi would come with you, but ah well. But I had a feeling about you, Alice Brighteye. Didn't I promise retribution if you were keeping information about Checker Face to yourself?"

Tsuna stiffened.

"When did you meet him?" He whispered to me.

"After the Shimon battle. The Vindice were threatening to take away Mukuro's body again, remember? I… negotiated with Bermuda."

Tsuna's eyes told me he expected the whole story (and regret for not asking what I did back then sooner) later, and wheeled around.

"Alice must have had reasons why she couldn't say!"

Bermuda chuckled.

"Of course. Brighteyes always have reasons. Brighteye, did you really—"

"Enough."

Reborn's voice cut through the whole conversation. "You were telling us about the murals. Alice is one of my students."

Bermuda paused, before smoothly continuing.

"Of course. I'll tell you the truth." Reborn had, in a very calculated move, hopped from Tsuna's shoulder to mine. Both Tsuna and Reborn seemed to relax a little at that, and to be honest, I did too.

It was safer that way.

"But before that, take off your watches. Otherwise, Checker Face might listen in."

* * *

Dino panted, as the Vindice finally took off after stealing the Shimon's three watches. In the end, they had told Enma to throw his Boss Watch to the Vindice, as their strength was flagging. The Vindice, although had gotten slower, hadn't gotten weaker. They were too strong to handle while trying to avoid excessive injury.

"Take stock of whose hurt!" He called to his own Family members, who had rushed to him straight after the Vindice vanished. The only ones who didn't show up were the illusionists, who were still conveying the peaceful suburb that Tsuna's house should have been in.

"Basil, can you stand?" Iemitsu asked as he kneed over his subordinate.

"Yes, but Master… I do not think I can be able to battle anymore. My leg seems broken."

Iemitsu smiled.

"It's okay."

As Boss, he had been targeted twice as many times as the other members, but he had gotten through. However, Gamma, the leader of the Orange Arcobaleno's team had had his whole wrist smashed.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

Bianchi had called and told the group that she had successfully distracted Nana from coming back for another half an hour; and Iemitsu could only sigh in relief.

So there was a positive to Tsuna's vanishing act with Reborn and Alice. He had had no chance of losing his whole team, on the go.

However, Tsuna's Guardians were tense. Yamamoto was standing still and supportive behind a pacing Gokudera.

"Us four have always been together," Gokudera ranted, smoke rising from cigarettes. "Remember the first day we met, Yamamoto? We became a _group_ then, it was the official start of Juudaime's Family. We've always been there for each other, but now they're gone, you baseball idiot! Don't just stand there and smile!"

Yamamoto's smile didn't fade.

"Now, Gokudera—"

"I'm the Right Hand Man, you're the wannabe Right Hand Man whose really a jock, and creepy eyes is the girly nerd and Juudaime is what we all revolve around! And then this came along, creepy eyes goes and joins another group so we're down to three. Then Juudaime seems to be getting stronger and stronger, but now he's alone with creepy eyes and we _aren't there for them_." Gokudera paused, turned around, and started pacing on another patch of grass.

"Those bastards! How can they leave us behind!"

"Calm down, Gokudera."

"Calm? I'll show you calm!"

"No, Gokudera." Yamamoto dropped his smile, completely serious as he placed his hands on Gokudera's shoulders so he would just _stop moving_. "They're both strong. They can make it out of there. They've got the baby with them, yes? Though," he laughed, "there are so many babies around nowadays."

Gokudera, who had actually nearly bought that calming down speech blew up at the last part.

"Stop joking! They could be dying, they disappeared with that _Bermuda_ guy, dammit!"

Yamamoto sighed, looking at the sky.

"I know. And there's nothing we can do about it."

Gokudera grew silent.

"That's why we have to start moving forward now. To let Tsuna and Alice come back to a moderately normal house," he cracked a smile at the sheer wreckage of the back yard, "to find his friends all alive and well. To do what we can now, so that Tsuna doesn't have to do it later."

He gave Gokudera a playful nudge. "Isn't that what you do best, Right Hand Man?"

Gokudera, although still fuming, accepted the words.

"Right. I have the duty to make Juudaime's house as it always have been…" Gokudera peered past Yamamoto's shoulder and his jaw dropped in horror. Then he stormed forward.

"You! What Family are you from?"

"Cavallone, sir?" The guy answered, confused.

"_You are putting those tulips in the wrong place_. They were on the _left_ of the path. Don't you have any memory? And you! Put that where it was before!"

Yamamoto watched his friend take control of the situation (also known as becoming an efficient, domineering dictator) and gave a little sigh himself.

Even if he said all those pretty words, he couldn't help but worry. But it was also true, that there was no point in only worrying. He had always been good at being productive.

Wading past the people who were trying to reconstruct Nana's garden to perfection before she came back (with Gokudera yelling at a poor guy who bought orange roses instead of yellow) Yamamoto picked up a broom and started sweeping the veranda, trying to push the horrid feeling of _failure_ from his mind.

The Vindice had successfully stolen all three of the watches they had been targeting, and even smashed Yuni's Boss Watch. And the second day's battle hadn't even started yet…

As Yamamoto swept, Hibari was sniffing at all the _domesticity_ that was happening.

There was no way he was planting flowers. Or sweeping anything. Or even planting new rolls of grass.

No.

_Never._

So he just turned around and walked straight out the yard, turning back towards his own house. It had been a good fight, even though he had neither won nor lost. Which frustrated him.

Gripping his tonfa, he vowed to smash those bandaged faces in next time. Along with Mukuro's.

Arriving at his home around thirty minutes later, just as he had finished changing into clean clothes and preparing for a nap, the phone rang. He dragged a utilitarian chair out of the way to reach it, answering it with a bored "This is Hibari Kyoya speaking. Who is this?" because just because he didn't use his manners all that often didn't mean he had none.

There was a pause before he heard an answer.

_"Hibari. It is time."_

Hibari immediately scowled, slamming the phone down and stalking out the door. Again.

He'll go the hospital to nap.

* * *

**And if you're wondering why there was no update last week, it was because I had a family trip to Melbourne that whole weekend and then some. And when I tried to type anything, there was never any **_**time**_**. GAAAAH TIME WHY YOU ELUDE ME SO**

**So there's no Mukuro.**

**There's a reason. I just decided to cut this chapter in half. This is long enough already, and hey, the next chapter would probably conclude the whole Bermuda/Arcobaleno thing, so yuuuuup. Lots of Mukuro next chapter. No kidding. Probably would reveal who Hibari's mysterious caller is, although you'll probably know if you read the author's note last week. Hahahaha….**

**Yeah. **

**I hope you enjoyed it**

**It's actually a proper chapter.**

**I'm not TROLLING**

**And yeah! The next month I'll be in Hong Kong, and I think I'll have internet access but I'm not sure. But where in Hong Kong won't you have internet access? Hahaha _ so I think I'll be able to send a chapter a week anyway! XD Or maybe every fortnight. That seems more plausible, since it'll be my birthday, and like, chinese relatives all being like 'naaaw, haven't seen you for like, five years. You've grown fatter! And Taller!' OMG REALLY?**

**yeah Soooooo looking forward to it, guys.**

**So review! I'm started to get a bit of my flair back. I've been dead during the past half year, so my chapters might have reflected that (sorry) but now! I am swamped! but alive! It might take a little time to get back into the flow of things though. Sigh. I'm alive but...**

**Not for long though**

**My high school exam finals results are coming soon.**

**WISH ME LUCK GUYS. I WANT TO GET INTO THE COURSE I APPLIED FOR. TT_TT**

**(Oh. And I love you all. You knew that, right?)**


	66. and continues?

Last time…

_Arriving at his home around thirty minutes later, just as he had finished changing into clean clothes and preparing for a nap, the phone rang. He dragged a utilitarian chair out of the way to reach it, answering it with a bored "This is Hibari Kyoya speaking. Who is this?" because just because he didn't use his manners all that often didn't mean he had none._

_There was a pause, before he heard an answer._

"_Hibari. It is time."_

_Hibari immediately scowled, slamming the phone down and stalking out the door. Again. _

_He'll go the hospital to nap. _

**Aaaaaaaand… something like Skull ruining their plans, fighting, and now they're in Bermuda's cave! XD I had fun in Hong Kong… and then I lazed around for a week or so (which means about two weeks) and GUYS THANKS FOR YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT! I can go into my course. **

**Full note down at the very very bottom**

* * *

For a baby, Bermuda was pretty scary. Reborn already had Leon in his hand while Tsuna was in front of me, bristling and intense. No matter what Bermuda said, taking off their watches after seeing Bermuda making a desperate bid for _Enma's_ watches. Well.

Especially when Tsuna's was a Boss watch.

And especially when I was there. This was according to plan in ways that shouldn't have. You see, our plan consisted of Tsuna getting dragged here a little later than this – Bermuda coming to get Skull was also delayed to a point where Tsuna would have gotten a better understanding for Arcobaleno. We were planning to _tell_ him, a Reborn to Tsuna chat to chat that made him understand how deep Reborn's trust in him was.

(Well, that was my idea, Reborn didn't exactly see it that way. He was too Hitman and strong that sometimes he was a bit dense – he thought it was just briefing Tsuna. I saw it as an act of trust. I think he saw what I was trying to do but dismissed it, which of course, says a lot about his trust already. Reborn would never be soft-hearted, but seeing how he is around us kids, you would never guess.)

Staring at the darkness, I muttered an annoyed curse.

Damn Skull. And his clown acrobatic things that let him escape.

It was clear what I had to do. Let it run its course _without_ me. Let the plot take its course as far as it would go. Tsuna and Reborn had to worry about a fighter that (while not weak) wasn't as strong as the monsters that they were.

For the first time in my life, I was glad to be a Brighteye.

"Tsuna, Reborn," I said while never taking my eyes off Bermuda. "It seems like I'll be a liability in this case, so don't worry about me. I'm going to take myself out of the picture."

Tsuna _nearly_ turned around. I stress on the nearly.

I could feel the pride radiating from my shoulder.

Tsuna was learning.

"How? It looks like the only way we could leave here is to use their Flames, and Alice, I don't really trust the Vindice…"

"No, in another way."

I shrugged my shoulder, and Reborn hopped off with a look of curiosity. I drew out Flames as quickly as I could, two lots of them. The first lot to block out 'signals'. This time I interpreted the 'signals' as any life signals. Presence signals.

With that covering my body, I used the other lot of Flames as Invisibility Flames, mouthing a 'good luck' over to Tsuna before (presumably) vanishing from their gaze. I stepped carefully away, and even Reborn's eyes didn't flicker my way, as they would usually do.

I looked carefully at Jager and Bermuda.

Bermuda looked very angry.

"_Where is she,_" he hissed. "We still had… _things_ to say to Brighteye." Jager's eyes kept darting right over me, and I kept very still. As still as I possibly could be. It wasn't that good to experiment with a Flame's power in a life threatening situation but… it seemed to be working? Yay?

"I-I don't know anymore," Tsuna bravely stuttered. "Let's get onto other things. Are you going to steal our watch?"

Reborn hopped to Tsuna's shoulder, drawing attention to himself. Bermuda immediately seemed to calm down, his main imperative right there staring back at him.

If Reborn felt awkward that the world's strongest Arcobaleno seemed to be obsessed with him, he didn't show it.

"No, that watch is from Checker Face," Bermuda said, his eyes fixed on Reborn even while Jager kept looking around, swivelling his neck around really really disconcertingly. It was like it was dislocated, and people with dislocated necks can't walk or talk so… urgh. It was kinda gross.

I felt sorry for the Vindice, if they had had to exist like this for _more than_ four hundred years. Bermuda was one scary guy.

"The watches can be tracked. If you would follow me…" Jager walked into the the room behind them, their presence unblocking the light that spilled out. Tsuna squinted, while Reborn stood stiffly on his shoulder.

"Alice, your part cannot be done now," Reborn said softly.

I let the Flames around my head flow downwards right in front of Tsuna.

It was kind of funny how Tsuna jumped and had to bite his sleeve to keep from screaming.

After a few seconds of hyperventilation, Tsuna finally heaved a breath out.

"Alice!" He whisper screamed. "Don't do that!"

I gave him a deadpan.

"What?"

Tsuna just sighed and muttered to himself as Reborn gave me a solemn nod. "Stay out here. You know approximately when we'll escape, right?" I nodded, and Reborn continued. "We'll go in and listen to the truth. Then when he lets us out, you'll go first before us. Tsuna!" Reborn gave a short bark. "Pay attention."

Tsuna gave a soft 'hiie' before turning wincing eyes at my floating head. "What, Reborn?" he whined.

"When Bermuda lets us out," (he ignored Tsuna's complaints about how he might just trap them down here forever)," you'll walk over to it very slowly. Then you'll stand in front of the portal for around ten seconds, citing you're nervous and scared. Okay?" Tsuna gave a startled nod at how serious Reborn was. There were no tiny smirking smiles today. Reborn looked practically naked without it. Reborn with no perma-smirk!

"This is how Alice will escape. Bermuda would want to trap Alice here more than us. You heard him."

Tsuna straightened a little at that.

"Yeah," he replied, sounding subdued. "I did."

I just nodded.

"Okay, Reborn." _I got it._ Tsuna gave me a shaky smile.

The whole conversation was soft enough that the only echoes were soft whispers, and I recovered my head in Flames right before Bermuda came back with Jager.

"Well?" He asked, voice seemingly patient.

Reborn looked straight at him.

"We've decided to follow you."

Bermuda gave a shark like smile.

"Of course," he replied before disappearing into the light-filled room. Tsuna visibly gave a shuddering breath, and I stepped forward and squeezed his elbow lightly before letting go.

He looked to his side and backwards (instead of forwards) and whispered thanks. Funny how he thought I would be standing behind him.

"No problem," I whispered as softly as I could before stepping away. Tsuna then straightened his shoulders and walked forward, me trailing softly behind him. This time I didn't have to fight anyone directly (first time for everything – no magical Brighteye Vindice for once) so keeping silence was a good way to start.

When they reached to the room, Bermuda and Jager were waiting. I contemplated staying inside the tunnel that led into the room, but Jager starting to close the door gave me other ideas, and I walked as quietly as possible to the podium where Tsuna and Reborn were keeping their watches, standing close to the nearest wall. They wouldn't direct their fight here, because the watches were vulnerable. And Tsuna and Reborn would have to walk back here to leave.

I closed my eyes, and breathed in slowly. Out slowly, resisting the temptation to breathe faster from adrenaline. I slowly calmed down.

Breathe in.

_(Bermuda's bitter anger at being tricked, him yelling and Tsuna's wide eyes)_

Breathe out.

_(Join me, Reborn. This battle is just to choose the next Arcobaleno. You're just left to be killed off for you new successors. Ironically your beloved students)_

Breathe in.

_(It's Hell if you accept my proposal to join my eternal fight against Checker Face… and Hell if you decline. You can't escape. Join me, and you'll at least have the chance to fight)_

I was the master at ignoring other people's pain now anyway. I had seven years worth of practice.

Breathe out.

_(Jager attacking Tsuna, Reborn calling Tsuna back, he had no chance, can he have time to think about the proposal with the other Arcobaleno? No? Maybe he'll just refuse as well then)_

Don't get in harm's way, because that would only detract from what Reborn and Tsuna was trying to do.

I gritted my teeth.

_Breathe in._

I decided to look at the big rock cave instead, the rough stone walls and how there were no exits. Maybe that was why the air was so stale. The Vindice obviously didn't care about proper air, if they were corpses (kind of). My hand absently dug into the rock, trying to scrape some dust or anything.

Slowly, a little piece of rock came off.

Covering it quickly with Flames, I put it in my pocket.

And started my breathing exercises again.

When did they stop fighting again?

(At least Reborn wasn't going into depression this time, as he knew now, what that missing piece in my plan was. Why Tsuna needed to go through this, and why he was so important to the plan)

* * *

Tsuna's voice was annoyingly loud and squeaky when Bermuda finally (_finally,_ after what, three beat downs and ten-thousand speeches of 'my side is the best Reborn I have an obsession with you so hate on Checker Face with me' and gah) opened a black Flame gate for them to escape.

"Is that the Gate?" Tsuna squeaked loudly, before glancing surreptitiously around. "It's so scary looking!"

Gosh Tsuna, could you be more obvious about it? Just because _I_ was invisible didn't mean I was _blind._

Tsuna and Reborn were putting on their watches again, and I stood up.

I walked before them, and Tsuna stood in front of the gate for a few seconds before Bermuda was once again mocking Tsuna's 'strength of will' and blahblahblah I'm stronger Reborn join me, and (even though he was creepy and strong and oh-so-dangerous) I just wanted to… do something drastic. Like yell at him to shut up. I don't think I've done that for awhile. Ever?

So I squeezed Tsuna's elbow, and he stared at it before nodding to Reborn.

I jumped in then, so I didn't see anything else.

We were spat back out at the side of Namimori, Reborn and Tsuna behind me (I was too busy trying to get that disgusting Black Flame transport from my guts – holding on to retching was actually very hard). With that, we started to walk slowly back. I stayed invisible for a few more minutes, just in case, before letting all the Flames go and float as a portable lantern above our heads.

"Did you get all that?" Reborn asked.

"Yup." I played with the rock in my pocket, slouching next to Tsuna. Reborn's little legs were kicking Tsuna's shoulder. "It played exactly as what I saw."

Tsuna gave me a 'duh," expression, but Reborn nodded instead. He understood.

"What I don't understand is why you're so calm, Reborn," Tsuna said to his first and best friend. "Bermuda just said that you… you all were doomed to die either way. Heck, _I_ feel more stressed for you than you seem to! You're going to _die_ in a few days, Reborn!"

There were a few seconds of silence.

"I'm not going to die, Tsuna," Reborn said softly. "I… I believe there's always another way. A third way."

Tsuna's voice turned hopeful.

"So you know?"

It was obvious, really, what Tsuna was thinking. _Reborn knows everything_.

"No." There was a silent beat of defeat, because Reborn was just that good an actor. He needed Tsuna to grow.

"Then…"

"I'll trust you to help me as well, Tsuna." Reborn gave him a forced smirk. "I'll tell everyone what the truth is. But I don't think we can go through without thinking in loops." Reborn's voice then held a warning. "Don't give up though, Tsuna. Don't give in to thinking there's no way out."

Tsuna visibly swallowed some protests, and I interjected.

"Let's talk about something else for now. We're clearly not able to think straight right now."

Another beat of silence as we cast about something to say after that crapload of an info dump.

Then Reborn gave a growl as he clearly remembered something.

"So because of _Skull_," Reborn said it a vaguely promising way of _I-will-go-Hitman-baby-on-him-when-he-gets-better_, "some of the things that we were trying to achieve will have to be adapted." He gave me a solemn glance. "And now you're in danger. Bermuda wasn't happy with you, and he can teleport anywhere."

Tsuna, who had been trudging along tilted his head to look past Reborn at that.

"Alice, what did you say about meeting Bermuda before?"

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair.

I just wanted to go _home_.

"It's nothing big, Tsuna," I replied, voice as flat as possible.

Tsuna scrunched his face into a little frown – vaguely reminiscent of his Dying Will self. "Well," he started, blushing when it cracked in the middle. I suppressed the urge to smile (Reborn certainly didn't), and continued to stride forward while Tsuna cleared his throat, highly embarrassed.

"Well," his second attempt didn't crack but was certainly higher from embarrassment – a blush was creeping up his ears, amusingly enough. Oh little, iddy wibby Tsuna was growing up and feeling the effects of _puberty_. How precious. When did his voice start cracking anyway? Well, fifteen (sixteen, if you count in those months in the future) wasn't a bad place to start.

He cleared his throat again.

"I'm waiting, Tsuna," I said, trying to sound slightly kinder than usual. It's hard though, because my standards of non-deadpan always had me hounded on by other people _anyway_. School photos were tough work.

He gave a laugh, and Reborn on his shoulder (for the first time, tonight) relaxed and gave us two a smile that was loaded with all these snarky remarks that can be reduced to '_you two idiots'_ that I ignored him.

"I just think that you shouldn't think it's nothing big," Tsuna just said instead. He pursed his lips, us two strolling (I hope that wasn't a little limp he was hiding – Jager's hits were brutal) down towards the not-so-distant lights of Namimori in the middle of what could be, any second, a survival game. Weird didn't encapsulate my feelings.

Oh Katekyo. When will you ever be normal.

"I know Yamamoto, you know. He likes to talk about a lot of little things, but ultimately he's told me a lot about himself too," Tsuna started spouting randomly. I blinked, since how did Yamamoto link to my Bermuda problem? "Yamamoto told me that although he had a practically perfect life beforehand, he wasn't happy. He was never happy. The other things you would have to ask Yamamoto of course," he sent me an apologetic glance, "but ultimately he told me he didn't regret meeting us and joining my group."

I barely managed to suppress a smile.

_My_ group. I might not be good at talking, but I was trained to notice this stuff. Even an amateur could have caught Tsuna's pronoun. By Reborn's growing smirk, I just waved a hand for him to continue.

"To be honest, I don't know Gokudera that well," Tsuna confessed. "He just kind of blew in and suddenly gave me his eternal devotion for something I think any decent human being would do. Honestly, I kind of scared to ask, even though he wouldn't refuse me. I can't remember a time when he _did_ refuse me…"

I debated in my mind whether to talk.

Breathing in some crisp, night air (just a hint of pollution from Namimori, otherwise clean), I replied.

"I can tell you everything about Gokudera's past, and give you a hint to his motivations but I don't think that'll be wise." I hummed a little in thought. "You should ask him when you're ready, Tsuna. And not push him into it or anything."

Tsuna gave a tiny nod. "Yeah, like I want to know because I'm your friend, but I won't push you if it's too hard type of thing?"

"Yes."

He gave me a slightly pathetic look.

"Is his past really that sad?"

Gokudera?

Hyper intelligence, being a Mafia bastard, mother dying at three, running away into the streets at eight, surviving by making amateur bombs until twelve, blustering his way into a Family and only staying enough to learn how to safely throw dynamite. Freelancing until Bianchi found him when he was thirteen and a half. Ran away from _that_, then locked on by the Vongola for talent. Reborn noticed, shipped him to meet Tsuna.

And the rest is history.

"It's a lot more dramatic than yours or Yamamoto's, that's for sure," I said wryly. "Don't push him. There is most likely some childhood trauma, which is also a motivator for his dedication to you."

Tsuna paled. "Am I unhealthy for him or something?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. But really, he's still following you. Gokudera is a genius." And that wasn't even a compliment. "You still haven't disappointed him yet."

Tsuna gave a tiny 'oh', before falling silent.

I wondered if I had successfully diverted the conversation.

"What about you? You didn't include yourself in that 'dramatic' part."

Ah, the annoying fact that Tsuna's instinct was far too astute to trick.

Damn subconscious.

"What do you know?"

Tsuna fidgeted, his hair bobbing in the wind.

"Little bits?"

"Like?"

"Uh… you were some child soldier trained from eight years old from this selecting eye thingy and you come from one of the best info Families in the world and uh… that's it?"

I shrugged.

"That's basically it."

Tsuna huffed.

"No it's not, and you know it, Alice! There's nothing of _you_ in there! What I just said was applicable to all of that elite group thing, wasn't it?"

"Yes?"

"Exactly!" Tsuna threw up his hands. "I don't know anything about the people in my Family that come from Italy, or England, or whatever, Mafia. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, or maybe I just wasn't interested, but I know things about Yamamoto, Kyoko-chan, Ryohei, heck, even _Hana_. But I've known you the _longest_, and I barely know anything about you!"

I shrugged again. "You don't need to."

Tsuna made a faintly aggravated grabby hands gesture at the sky, before turning to Reborn, who was picking at his nails.

"Why doesn't she _get_ it."

"Maybe she does, and just doesn't want you to know?"

I tugged Tsuna away from walking into the first street light we saw. Back into Namimori common. He glanced at me, before shaking his head.

"No, she doesn't _get it_."

"Your Hyper Intuition?" Reborn just raised an eyebrow. "Ask her instead of me, Dame-Tsuna."

Tsuna sighed, before turning to me.

"Why don't you _get_ it?"

I blinked at him.

"Get what?"

And inwardly smirked at the anguished scream he yelled into the sky. A couple of birds flew away.

"No, as in why don't you understand that it's okay to tell me things?"

Giving him an unimpressed deadpan, I kept moving forwards.

"I can handle it myself, so I don't need help."

Tsuna sighed, before visibly letting all his frustration go.

"Look, I'm pretty new at this friendship thing too, okay? But even I understand that with friends you can _lean_ on one another just for the comfort it brings. I like to think I'm able to be there for my friends, you know?"

I nodded.

"That's good, Tsuna."

Tsuna stopped walking and swung his head towards Reborn.

"She _still doesn't get it!"_ he whined.

Reborn whacked him on the head.

"No, now she's pretending."

I finally caved in and gave a little chuckle. Tsuna glared at me.

"It's not funny, Alice."

"Yes it is."

I sighed, finally getting Tsuna's round-a-bout logic.

"You're trying to tell me that leaning on you is okay, right? So that I tell you stuff like the Bermuda thing?" Tsuna moved to say something. "It's rhetorical. Tsuna, it really wasn't a big deal. Mukuro's body had to be freed, the Vindice were there. Everyone was tired except me. The Brighteyes and the Vindice have a prior relationship," conveniently forgetting to say that I hadn't known of its existence, "and with all that I just went to the Vindice and asked they could release Mukuro's body."

Glancing at Tsuna, I gave a little nod when he seemed to be following. "The Vindice release a person in a few ways. If an appropriate sum is managed, proving that the held victim wasn't in the wrong and a monetary fee, proving that the victim wasn't in the wrong and supplying the real culprit, or giving something else of importance of same or greater value. I had the last."

"Last? I thought that… it would have been the first."

This time a disbelieving laugh did tear itself out. "Gosh no, Anise would kill me."

"Anise?"

"She's the person who organises everything. The spider of the web, you can say."

"Leader?" Reborn asked, happy to reap all the information I was giving in such an _informative_ mood.

"No," I retorted. "No-one is a leader. She holds a role just like the rest of us. We call directions from her sometimes, but each to their own. It's not like Mafia, Reborn," I just said. "With Mafia there is the Boss who knows everything, and their subordinates. The Elite Fifty are all Bosses, you can say, and all of us have our different missions. Anise's is just that. Be the spider."

"And who calls your missions?" Reborn said a little challengingly, because I _know_, it was hard to wrap this concept around their heads. I held power, yes, but not over any other person. Just the collective benefits the whole of our Brighteye Family had. That's why we strived to gain more and more, because all of us want to help our 'next generation'.

"We're born with them." I sombre up.

Reborn evidently remembered our conversation on the boat. Those _visions_.

"Ah."

Tsuna gave a confused eyebrow waggle, which was rather funny really. "So you're kind of a Boss too?"

"I may be some legendary child soldier and some info wizard, Tsuna. But I can't Boss around anyone other than my own agents," Reborn gave a very very speculative glance at me at that (don't be excited Reborn, it was only Nezu-sensei), "and our info network. We consider each other as actual _family_. And family respects each other's individuality."

Reborn gave an 'oh' sound.

"So that's why you're all so close-knit," he murmured, "to the point where there are nearly no records of Brighteyes fighting with each other except for some very flashy, specific ones. Not because of a Boss, but this mob mentality of family?"

I gave a dry smirk.

So wrong.

"Something like that."

"That's really… nice," Tsuna said. Reborn gave him another whack on the head.

"Don't get ideas, Tsuna. It only works for the Brighteyes because of something else tying them together."

I nodded.

"Yup. Vongola would fall apart."

Tsuna gave a sad sigh.

"Oh. So you had something of greater value, Alice?"

It took a few seconds for me to understand what he was saying before I nodded. "Yup, I had information that the Vindice wanted."

"Checker Face?"

"No. Just other things like things that can alter his immediate future."

Or maybe something like _telling him_ his role in my immediate future.

"But I refused to say anything about Checker Face. He threatened that if I had hid any information about him I would pay or something, but really I didn't think much on it." I shrugged. "Then he found out I knew all about him all along, and as you saw in that cave back there… he blew up. He'd hated him for over four-hundred years but never got anything. It's understandable."

"I think you should go to a safe house, not your apartment. With another Arcobaleno. I can fit you into my house?" Tsuna asked.

I thought of all the people and shook my head.

"No, you have to catch up with the others. I have to find my own team-mate. Hibari wouldn't be there. Fon would be with Hibari."

Thinking a little, I called Grey just as we rounded into the first recognisable suburb.

"Miss? You're quite late today," Grey said as a greeting.

"Sorry Grey," I apologised, inching further away from Tsuna (who was having a heart to heart with Reborn). "It's going to be a bit dangerous. Can you pack dinner and go to Hibari's house? Our enemies this time can teleport. Hibari's house has one of the more combat specialised Arcobaleno. It'll be a safer bet." I paused. "And our apartment won't get trashed."

_I _didn't want to pay for repairs.

Grey gave an efficient "I'll meet you at Hibari's house in fifteen minutes," and with quick courtesies he cut the phone off. Looking around the now familiar streets, I turned left as Tsuna and Reborn turned right.

"Hibari's house is off that way for a bit. See you later."

I was just about to walk off, when Tsuna screeched 'WAIT' in my ear.

Well, nearly in my ear.

"What?" I turned, an irritable downturn to my mouth.

"We just _said_ that it was dangerous for you without an Arcobaleno!" Tsuna jogged so he was walking with me again, as I started heading towards the house.

"It's just five minutes."

Tsuna was _very_ unimpressed.

"Yes, and they can teleport."

…

Point conceded.

"Come on then. Have you ever gone to Hibari's house?"

"No… I don't think so."

I gave a quick smirk.

"It's very very boring. No worries, Tsuna."

We walked in companionable silence until we reached the front of Fon's house. I could see Fon's silhouette on the roof, Reborn acknowledging him and jumping from Tsuna's shoulder towards Fon (moon-watching?) to brief him to the situation.

Tsuna and I were left alone.

"It… is a boring house."

I nodded.

"Yeah, I expected something really flashy, for some reason. Like, dragons everywhere, and traditional paint and gardens and those bamboo water thingies."

Tsuna gave a short laugh.

I was about to step inside the front yard before stopping and turning around.

"Tsuna, about earlier." I tugged on his elbow so he would tear his gaze from the two Arcobaleno on the roof to me. I stared straight into his eyes, and he didn't even flinch now. "It felt really nice. To know that, uh. You. Care? I mean," I flustered, saying all these awkward things, "no-one has ever done that, no wait, I haven't had friends, no, that's not true. Wait, more like, I appreciate the sentiment—"

Tsuna cut me off with a bright smile.

"Alice, it's no problem. You don't have to stress over thanking me. That's what friends do."

I blinked dumbly at him, before taking one of his hands in both of mine and bowing quite deeply, in comparison to a normal head tilt.

"Just. Let me say, thank you."

I kept it that way for a second before standing up, and I loosened enough so that I let out a genuine, one-hundred percent sentiment filled smile. Funny how it was when the strongest fighter in the world was hunting me down, and I felt just… happy with it all.

My term of service was just nearly _done_. I've made wonderful friends, had a good time with them full of hardship and trust and all that lovely fluffy stuff and really, I could have been so much unhappier (like if I went into Midsummer Night's Dream. I would never get over that, actually) even if I wasn't that happiest person in the world.

I literally couldn't remember the last time I smiled genuinely.

So I rectified that situation now. Dropping his hand and patting Tsuna's shoulder, (he looked a bit shell-shocked and blushy really, though I guess it's just that I've never thanked him before), I nodded and went inside the garden, closing the gate and looking up at the two Arcobaleno.

They hopped down.

"Hibari is in hospital."

"Sleeping? Or hurt?"

"Sleeping. Tsuna, Enma lost his Boss watch to the Vindice, and Gamma had his smashed. Basil had his leg broken but otherwise fine. No contact with Varia or Mukuro, but your father made it through."

Not bad.

"You should leave now, its… ten." The smile that I had was still lingering on my face when I turned to Fon. "Let's go to the hospital, just in case Hibari needs his much denied help."

Fon chuckled.

"Of course."

* * *

I waited until Grey pulled over in his car, and he looked a little relieved to see me. I gave him a thumbs up, and we slid into the car, Fon and I, to see that Grey had my dinner all packed and ready.

As I tore in (offering Fon some out of politeness and nothing else), Fon gave me a short, but efficient, runover of what had happened after we had left, more detailed that Reborn's curt 'this happened, that happened'. He theorised what would happen, and questioned me yet again what Hibari's role was.

I shrugged and answered through a mouthful of chicken.

"Fight."

Fon sighed, but got out of the car into the hospital, where Reborn shortly joined him to drag him to some place else, probably to talk with the other Arcobaleno. A lot of the members in the Representative Battle were in the hospital, after all.

Grey and I went and found Hibari's room from a frightened nurse, and just sat outside, me eating dinner, and Grey perusing through something in his phone.

I finally finished with a sigh.

That… hit the spot. I hadn't eaten since Tsuna's house. Which reminds me about Tsuna…

We just sat there, the nurses giving us all sort of blankets and pillows because we were _Hibari's friends_ (which would have been very kind of them if they didn't look scared to bits) and I made a comfortable cocoon for myself.

The clock ticked past midnight.

The watch beeped.

I gaped at it.

What?

In three seconds (in which I gaped at my watch) Reborn was in front of me. "I have to get to Tsuna soon. Do you think…"

I nodded. "It fits the Mukuro fight. It's just past midnight on the new day. Go to Tsuna and tell him to go to the park."

Reborn nodded, before harshly whispering, "you have a choice to where to go. You can go and occupy Iemitsu and come and join the Mukuro fight. You were concerned about Hibari messing with how Mukuro would interact with Chrome and Tsuna, right?"

I nodded.

"I'll think about it. Go… Reborn."

He'd already left even before I finished the sentence. I rolled my neck, thinking about it.

Iemitsu was the safe option.

Mukuro was the interesting one.

The thing about Mukuro, was that he was very enigmatic. Not charismatic so much (although when I reread the manga with that panel detailing Mukuro's supposed 'charisma' with a shot of a very AU pop star Mukuro I laughed my head off) but really enigmatic.

Sure, he had his charisma, to lure in loyal friends. But the thing was, he didn't earn them through charisma. He earned them through sheer hard work, and showing them his brilliant scheming side. Like Ken and Chikusa, for example, who he saved when they were kids from that Estraneo. Told them they weren't failures, and join his quest. Who wouldn't follow a kid that seemed to slay the most evil beings on the planet and believed in you?

MM he had saved from jail, Chrome is obvious (organs, showing care, etc), Fran not-so-much as teaching him skills and therefore chaining his place by Mukuro's side.

So therefore, excuse me when I said no, Mukuro is not charismatic.

He is charming, though.

And, you know, charmed poor Chrome's heart away into his cause.

What I'm trying to say is not that Mukuro is another over-powered handsome guy in the bunch of over-powered handsome guys in my life (which he is), or that he had quite amazing social skills for someone who seems quite mentally unstable sometimes, but that no one knows _anything_ about him.

No one, it seems, until Byakuran.

And then me.

And that, even then, seemed very very little.

* * *

When Tsuna went home, he was bombarded with Gokudera and Yamamoto's reports, and he was so relieved that nothing bad happened to them that he just sat there and took it all, wrapping a blanket around himself as he drank a cup of juice. Soon enough though (they had been staying awake for him to come back), after Tsuna had praised Gokudera's efforts at reorganising the garden (he wouldn't have realised the garden had been torn up, actually), and giving them both smiles they dropped off while Reborn who, for his brave words, had been clearly uneasy and left through the window for 'a meeting for the Arcobaleno.'

Tsuna guessed that they were receiving the horrible truth about the Battle around now.

He groaned into his blanket.

He had joined the Representative Battle because he had wanted to help Reborn. Then actually realising Reborn wasn't a _baby_ but this really cool, strong looking man that was cursed (with some type of magic? But then, Flames did exist…) with babynism.

That only fuelled his want to help Reborn more.

And then…

Bermuda's cold voice echoed in his head again.

"The Pacifiers need to be refreshed with new Flames… and every time that happens they need a new Guardian." And since the Pacifiers kind of… feed off the person's Flames or something? Or maybe they don't, but they slowly run out of Flames but are really precious so they need strong people guarding them?

Tsuna was so _confused_, it wasn't funny.

He only knew this.

Reborn would die if it was taken off. He couldn't agree to the Vindice, but he couldn't agree to Checker Face either. Two options.

And Reborn said to never give up.

His heart had twisted so much when he realised that Reborn was being defeated. Maybe he thought that Tsuna hadn't noticed, but that note in his voice called 'giving up'. Yeah, he had Hyper Intuition. After such a depressing speech from Bermuda, who wouldn't be?

Tsuna sighed, sitting up.

Two options.

Make a third.

What third?

Just then, midnight struck.

And his watch immediately started beeping.

[_BATTLE STARTS IN….]_

Tsuna stared at it in horror and quickly woke up Gokudera and Yamamoto. His dad was in the house! He still had his watch. They had to get out of there quickly!

Gokudera started cursing and getting ready, pulling on all his clothes in (nearly) one go while Yamamoto was efficiently checking his blades when Reborn swung through the open window.

"The space isn't good here. Let's go to the park."

Reborn followed the boys as they sneaked downstairs in the noisiest way possible, and racing down the street towards the large park a few streets away, then hopped onto Yamamoto's shoulder, who flashed him a quick grin.

"Is Alice going to be there?"

"She might decide to help you at the park, or go to Tsuna's house to keep Iemitsu in check. I gave her a choice."

Yamamoto creased his forehead in a worried frown.

"Tsuna's old man is quite strong."

"Yes."

They said nothing after that, as all three boys stumbled right into Rokudo Mukuro.

Reborn didn't bother hiding a smirk.

_This at least, is still correct._

* * *

"Mukuro!"

Mukuro looked haggard, his injuries visibly impending movement but he straightened out before, as if his injuries were nothing at all.

"Hello, Sawada Tsunayoshi."

* * *

_**Extra**_

_Mukuro 'entered' the Estraneo Famiglia when he was about two and a half, from one of the poorest slums that existed in Italy. A few years ago, there had been a large conflict between the Bovino and the Calcassa about weaponry deals, and one of the areas the Calcassa were in charge of was his. His mother was a clerk, his father was a normal carpenter, and he only knew that because the scientists would always unfailingly mutter the miracle that he was, to be born with so much potential from such mundane, useless parents._

_It was the classic Mafia story, with no shining Vongola heroes, no flashy Flames of justice. The Calcassa needed more money. They roamed their areas, their ramshackle buildings, their dirt roads and beat up anyone who didn't give them the required amount. _

_His mother and father were well to do in comparison to their neighbours from their jobs, so they were required to give more and more and more until they went into debt to a local loaning firm._

_They didn't know that loaning firm belonged to the Estraneo._

_The battle between the Calcassa and the Bovino had (anticlimactically) never started, apparently because someone on the Bovino side had contacted the Calcassa head with a little… sensitive information. _

_(Something about rubber duckies and his love for the pink My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! or some manly crap like that.)_

_His parents started to pay their loan back, too slowly for the loaning place and one day they just turned up to his parent's doors, knocked down the wooden door, shoved some fine print that they had signed which stated they could take whatever they thought of value and just stole Mukuro away._

_And there was nothing his family could do about except for rage and cry._

_Mukuro's first memory was of a nice, sharp face and bony arms._

_Mukuro's second memory was an eyedropper in front of his face, and people with face masks walking silently around, taking notes, and someone crying in the next crib that sounded younger than him._

_He watched and waited in the white labs, noting the children who were taken and never came back, and the few that persevered and survived even when there was no reason to. He remembered the shock of seeing one of the older ones (thirteen or so, he couldn't really remember) suicide in the corner by biting his tongue, keeping it quiet so that the doctors they were provided with would come and save him._

_All the children in the room were placed in separate rooms and watched over carefully._

_Smart, they were. None of the children had thought that one could kill themselves. It was dizzying free concept._

_But he kept still and obedient._

_Watched, and waited._

_When he was five years old, he understood that the Estraneo had around seven different goals. Giving human beings the better, stronger, faster animal attributes. Developing weaponry that looked safe, like children's toys. Emotional deprivation and its effects. Their special Possession bullet, and its development. Genetic engineering to the brain, and Flame qualities. Reverse-engineering collected fragments of other Family's Special Bullets._

_The seventh was simply 'Brighteye'._

_He had no idea what that meant until he turned eight. One second he was running on a treadmill, and the next he was standing in a dim room, with many, many different books that ran sky high into infinity, with sunlight glancing through. When he stepped forward, a fireplace and a couch appeared._

_There was a short old man._

_Mukuro assumed it was just another hallucination, and simply shrugged and walked over to sit when the little man smiled and waved._

"_Welcome, Mukuro."_

* * *

**Hi! *coughs in shame* As stated above… I was lazy. I'M SORRY I JUST NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO BE LAZY BEFORE NOW FOR SO LONG and I got addicted and… (I know typos I didn't get to edit I'm really tired because I'm not sleeping well and yeah, I know, excuses)**

**Did you notice I dodged putting in Mukuro in again? It was another part of my headache that Mukuro just wouldn't work out. Before it was Hibari. Now it's Mukuro! When will it ever end? So before this chapter was like 12000 but now its just 6000. XD I hope to bring you guys a chapter each fortnight again though! I think it's possible now. I've gotten off my creative slump. ^^ I have a Death Note idea raring and ready to go after this finishes. I've even planned out the whole next arc for this fic!**

**Oh! And thank you for all your lovely reviews for last chapter! I got my results back… a few days ago and guess what? I GOT IN! Psychological Science with three electives – Creative Writing, Criminology and Philosophy. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I LOVE YOU GUYS THANK YOU SO MUCH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU**

**So with that in my heart**

**I couldn't not update guys**

**I just couldn't**

**So I yet again cut the chapter short.**

**Then next chapter is definitely going to finish the Bermuda arc, and then get really into the next one (Hibari's one) because I don't want to add on too many chapters. It's nearly 70. OMG. It's been like, three years or something!**

**And thank you all again, because we have reached 1000 and + favourites! It's because of your guys persevering through really, that I am here now, and I've been hearing a lot from new readers too! So thank you guys! I can't say it enough… so times ALL THAT I'VE SAID BY INFINITY AND BEYOND!**

**Okay. Crappy references aside**

**I love you all**

**Thank you.**


	67. That perceived chance

**What happened last time: Alice was going to leave for the Park or to Tsuna's house. Tsuna meets Mukuro at the park. **

**The Vindice also arrive. It's a happy place, of course**

* * *

When I arrived at the park, they were already working together. I'd left Grey to tend to Hibari (oh gosh, Grey the awesome person that picks up my slack. I can't not repeat this again, but damn. I would be nowhere without Grey) and told him to wake Hibari up in ten minutes. Then he could make the executive decision of telling Hibari to fight Iemitsu or Mukuro with me.

I refrained from telling him who they were though, just said 'the park and Tsuna's house. Tell him to pick one," and kind of leapt away like an adrenaline filled energiser bunny which is seriously _not_ the case because one of the things I absolutely hate about Tsuna's shounen manga fighting scenes is how _little sleep _I get and oh gosh, _I hate it I hate it I hate it_

Still kind of repeating this little uplifting phrase to myself, I reached the park. The Vindice had their back to me, and everyone else was facing them with surprising teamwork.

"Joushima!" Gokudera yelled, throwing bombs even while Ken grabbed like, a hundred of them and leapt at the Vindice.

Especially Gokudera.

I haven't seen him (in comradeship) for awhile. Seeing him, I was reaaaaaally surprised that I realised I kind of… missed him.

Like, I missed Gokudera.

Yelling in my ear about fist-bumping Tsuna.

And the jealous Juudaime eyes that he gets when he realises that someone else slapped the spider that Tsuna was scared out of his wits for.

And his name calling.

I kind of sank into despair at how that even made sense. We had this insult thing going on. Why would I even miss him?

What the heck? Sure, I missed Yamamoto, but that was logical. We had this steady broship going on, like, 'hey, let's be the sane ones here and watch people being crazy and by the way you want some sushi' type of thing, but _Gokudera…_

This kind of gave me a stunned mullet look smack dab behind the villains fighting, as Ken launched Yamamoto into the air towards the Vindice at supersonic speeds (no, not really, but you get the point).

Wow.

Watching them fight, I kind of forgot how people fought. I've been lurking around the background and avoiding as much fighting as possible, but watching Tsuna and Hibari fight alone isn't the same as teamwork. It made me smile.

And duck behind a tree, because wow Yamamoto, that attack kind of nearly blew the park to pieces. Chikusa (where did he come from?) suddenly threw out those evil spikey yoyos, wrapping them around the Vindice to let Tsuna fly forward with a yell of 'Super Glide!' and whip his Sky Flames around the Vindice in an Hyper X Stream.

The Vindice were fully enveloped by then, so I whipped out a ball of Flame, covered myself with it and just ran towards the other side where, you know, the good guys were. Not even the Vindice would be able to see through so much Flame.

Tsuna was flying back to us after his attempt to petrify/harmonise the Vindice, letting Mukuro have like drama time.

"Finish him, Mukuro!" Tsuna yelled as he skidded to a stop after he flew back. He landed down, his attention on the Vindice and nothing else, thrumming with battle high and tension. He stepped behind Mukuro carefully, waiting for the epic attack that would come any second now.

Mukuro gave an evil villain's smile.

Mukuro dramatically pulled on his glove.

"Yes. After you paved the way, I'll have to do it. I was supposed to use this technique to defeat you, but since the Vindice got in the way…" He said, slowly drawing out his words for dramatic effect.

And surprisingly, the Vindice didn't attack.

Gosh.

"Drama queen," I scoffed, even as Verde looked ecstatic that his invention to 'make illusions real' was going to be used by such a good illusionist.

Gokudera jumped out of his skin.

"Wait a second… Freaky eyes?"

I rolled the little ball of Flame towards the palm of my hand.

"Yes?"

He'd twisted left, so he had to twist his head right to see me, and he flashed a relieved grin—before he scowled.

"Why are you here? Is that bastard here with you too?"

Hibari?

I shook my head. "No. And I was watching Mukuro. You're the analyst, you should observe Mukuro's Genjuu Gagaia. And I'm here for you guys, this time."

Gokudera whipped his head back around just to catch a horde of sharp-teethed crows eating the Vindice.

Ew.

Gokudera's eyes widened.

"They're… eating the Vindice?"

Uncharacteristically of Yamamoto, he hadn't realised my presence yet, though he should have. Maybe I was just in his 'not a threat' tune, which is nice and all, but…

Reborn was on the other side of 'our side' of the park, and his assessing gaze at me didn't even last a second, because really… the crow's eating sounds were kind of disgusting.

Imagine a flock of crows and crunching meat sounds that is kind of muffled by flapping wings. And then you see specks of gooey something hitting the floor, and yeah.

I resisted the urge to hurl, and stepped forward, and Yamamoto finally noticed my presence.

"Alice!" He exclaimed happily before a sudden explosion of indigo light swept across the whole park, and Yamamoto's face froze into that joyless smile again, turning back around to Mukuro's attack.

"It blew up!" Gokudera unnecessarily stated.

"Oh. Seeing as it's the first time I've used it, I couldn't adjust it properly. It came out too powerful." Mukuro said, flexing his hand with the glove, staring straight at his power. By how he was looking at those Flames, he seemed more than proud. I guess he was thinking about world domination again.

Reborn deadpanned.

"I wouldn't want to be the enemy."

Verde looked at him, unimpressed. "That's the point."

It took a few more seconds for the Mist Flames to fade, but even to me, it was surprising to see that the Vindice hadn't fallen yet.

I'd known that this was how it happened, that the Vindice of course, _couldn't_ fall to the crows (how can stripping flesh off animated corpses stop them?) but Tsuna's attack was really, very strong, and Mukuro's one was stronger still and they were standing as if crows biting off sinew and muscle was _nothing_.

Which it was, I mean.

That didn't mean it made things less disquieting though.

"They're not dead!" Ken yelled, unconsciously sliding closer to Chikusa, who stared at it emotionlessly. Tsuna (to my amusement) didn't seem to have noticed me yet in all the dust and drama. "They don't have their hats and coats anymore!" Ken continued, using his better eyesight to find what was beyond that dust.

Ken paused.

"By the way, how do they look without the clothes, byon?"

Mukuro was unruffled. As always.

"This is the probably the first time someone sees what the Vindice really look like."

And it was true. Because unlike the first time, even though Tsuna and Reborn had gotten the invitation to join the Vindice, Jager hadn't unwrapped his bandages, nor taken off his hat.

"Are they even… human?" Yamamoto glanced at me, who stood between him and Gokudera. Gokudera though, he kind of lit up and got suspicious all at the same time.

"If they're not, what are they?"

"Zombies," I intoned flatly.

Tsuna started, and stared at me.

"Wh-what, Alice! What are you doing here?"

I shrugged.

"It's a battle. I'm a participant. I'm here to see the Vindice. Don't lose sight of them now, Tsuna. This is important." Tsuna gave a smooth nod (Hyper Dying Will never let him look awkward) and just stared ahead, relaxing once again.

Yamamoto gave me a fond smile.

"I kind of missed this, Alice! Haha!" He laughed, bright and clear (and really foreign, because who the heck laughs during a Great Reveal?)

Gokudera gave a quick snap.

"Get your head out of the clouds, Baseball Freak. The dust is dying down."

And so it was.

It took longer than I expected though. Ah, anime physics. They got bent all the time.

When the dust _did_ settle enough for people to see through it though, most people did give a surprised gasp.

"What?" Mukuro, Reborn and Verde gasp.

Tsuna was stone silent.

Gokudera fangirled.

"Zombies!"

Oh, how I (kind of) missed this group dynamic.

* * *

They looked really gruesome. One obviously didn't have enough muscle control to tuck their tongue in, and the other two had eyeballs popping out, cheeks rotting, skin that was grey and black and so obviously rotting that I kind of rolled the small ball of Flame in my palm over myself and turned invisible again.

Mukuro was staring forward with Tsuna.

"So this is how they actually look…" Mukuro mused, while Tsuna was slightly taken aback.

"Hu-humans?"

"Probably," Mukuro confirmed. "What did Alice say? Zombies?"

Yamamoto looked backwards, but I'd already gone invisible. He waved an arm in my vague direction.

"I think she turned invisible again."

Gokudera sighed.

"The idiot."

Hey. I took offense.

"Wa-wait, Mukuro-san! The-they have faces and wear clothes, byon… But, they look really, uh, splatter…" Ken observed rather hesitantly because of course, one could have Flame cursed babies, and bullets with magical properties, and boxes that defied how mass should work but no. Zombies obviously couldn't exist.

Duh.

"I don't like that though!" Verde yelled, backing away behind Reborn (whose combat ability is obvious). "Is this what you were talking about, Reborn? How that guy saves Arcobaleno?"

Reborn was silent, as he assimilated this new information for himself.

"This is hardly saving, isn't it?"

Maybe Reborn had thought that Bermuda's salvation was more than this pale mimicry of life. They were so obviously suffering.

Tsuna stared at the Vindice's faces, glanced at Reborn, and looked like he wanted to cry.

The Vindice, to their credit, didn't respond to our (less that polite) reactions to them.

"First of all," the middle Vindice stated, the one that didn't have her tongue sticking out, "I'll praise you." His voice was like chalkboards with glass, except it had a smooth undertone. Remnants of his past, maybe. "It's the first time that someone was able to rip off our clothes and see us. Just momentarily, I can say that you surpassed the power of a human being," he continued.

Reborn didn't even need a beat to reply. That gorgeous, brilliant baby.

"Are you suggesting that you aren't human, in the end?"

Everyone human in the field was horrendously surprised (discounting the Arcobaleno, the Vindice and me for obvious reasons).

"Besides," Reborn continued, "what you have around your necks is not something that can be found anywhere. Those are Arcobaleno pacifiers. Bermuda had told me."

The middle one responded again. "If he has told you, he plans to pull you into our ranks."

Reborn gave a tiny shrug.

"I don't care much for it, really. I still have doubts about him and Checker Face, no matter how he said he hated him."

"_NO WAY!_" The middle one yelled, outraged. "Bermuda would _NEVER, EVER_ team up with Checker Face! Bermuda is the most worthy to being an Arcobaleno!"

He was getting seriously agitated when the one to his right spoke up with broken sentences.

Half his cheek was ripped off. I think his tongue had partly rotted off too.

"Do not… speak… any… more," he said, voice cracking and changing and _horrible_.

Oh gosh.

I'd never expected myself to pity the Vindice before. Jager had kept his hat and bandages and cloak. It was easy to think of him as some type of evil guy with no past and a blind dog to Bermuda's whims (which were to suck Reborn into Vindice).

Since I was invisible, and I didn't want to feel any more bad for these guys, I kind of left the battle and walked to the street. Wandering towards the hospital actually, because was it ten minutes yet?

Of course I wasn't _abandoning_ them.

I was just waiting for our very special guest.

Anyway, the fight with the Vindice was going to get very messy, very soon.

As expected.

I smiled at the figure that had paused, panting at the end of the street.

"Hello, Chrome. You're just on time," I said as cheerfully as one could be when knowing your friends were fighting to the death. Chrome startled, trying to find where that weird voice was floating from, and I rolled the ball of Flames above us to light up the way better. It was dark, even with the street lights.

Chrome gave me a wavering smile.

"Alice," she said, "is Mukuro-sama?"

Gosh.

First conversational words.

_Mukuro-sama._

Gah.

I swear Mukuro should better start appreciating Chrome. Ducking under her shoulder and helping her hobble much more effectively than using a trident as a walking stick, I slowly helped her to the battlefield where I could hear muted shouts of pain and panicked fighting.

"He'll need you soon."

Chrome smiled and soldiered forward through the most, easily seen-through facades of 'I'm-not-feeling-pain-at-all' that I've ever seen.

"We're gonna lose," Verde said, staring at Mukuro's failing Genjuu Gagaia.

"We can't let it happen! Wake up, Fran!" MM was panicking, trying to slap Fran awake, but really, even I knew it was a lost cause. Reborn was visibly tensing (wondering, of course, if Chrome would actually come like I said she would when things weren't going to plan or plot anymore) when I helped Chrome through the bushes and had our dramatic entrance.

Gokudera (when he be bothered to glance at me) was like _what how the heck did you get there, _while Yamamoto was busy fending off Vindice. Tsuna startled like a reindeer, and Mukuro just _stared._

Very disconcerting.

"Let me help… your illusion…" Chrome said through (painful) breaths of air. "Let me… fight too…"

Then Chrome stepped through the trees, and officially into the battle field with an active watch and good illusory powers.

I made sure Chrome could stand by herself, and was about to nod back to Reborn (who was giving me his own nod of 'thank you for doing this' in which I was taking undue credit) when a voice sounded in my brain.

I suddenly couldn't hear anything else in the battlefield.

Which is freaking _dangerous_.

_[Alice, hey, yo! Aren't you excited to hear from me again? It's been so long!]_

* * *

There… was an annoying chirpy voice in my brain.

_[Naw, don't say that! I'm Alayne! Don't you remember me?]_

Now it was claiming to be Alayne, who likes potatoes as much as I did.

And dead, whose Will was stuck in my ring. It was obviously an auditory hallucination from not sleeping enough. I tried to focus on what Mukuro was saying to Chrome after Tsuna's outburst. He was… (I struggled to follow the conversation even as the annoying voice at the back of my head wouldn't stop nagging) trying to understand why Chrome wasn't accepting Mukuro's illusions?

Was that it? But didn't he already know this time?

I can't concentrate.

_[WILL YOU STOP IGNORING ME YOU DOOFUS?!]_

No.

Tsuna was saying some pretty inspirational stuff right now. And Mukuro was just ranting about how he wanted Chrome to be his full-fledged soldier.

Liar.

It was so obvious that Mukuro cared for Chrome in his own way.

_[I know right? It's so cute, really, but I didn't come in here for that reason, you know!]_

I shivered, trying to get over the fact that it was practically midnight in a Japan that was _clearly_ not in summer and that there was a voice in my head.

Oh gosh.

I have finally cracked.

_[No you haven't.]_

Yes I have.

_[You haven't!]_

I am clearly arguing with my head.

_[Ugh! I'm just telling you what your third Flame power was! You know, that thing where Jared said Star Flames had three powers? And mine was injecting it into people's body parts?]_

That idiotic trial? And no, I couldn't remember Jared saying anything like that.

_[My Trial wasn't stupid at all! Anyway, I've wanted to talk to you for awhile, but you haven't been using Flames a lot lately, and it was really hit and miss for awhile]_

Yeah, Tsuna banned me from using them.

_[Oh, really? That's nice of him, but that's not what I'm trying to say here. I'm saying that your Flames are less pure than mine, so you can't do what I do, even though our Flames are kind of similar. That's how you drew me out, you know]_

I thought every person had a different power for their third one? Or something like that?

…Was I really talking to Alayne in my head?

_[Yes! And well, there's something curious about that Mukuro-fellow. That's why I wanted you to see if I'm right in guessing your power. You haven't tried experimenting, have you?]_

Well, obviously, I thought. Those Flames ate up my life. I had a job to do and friends to cater for.

_[Be glad that I started thinking for you, then! I was kind just kind of sleeping when this really big urge to do this made me wake and figure it out for you! Kind of like that time the Sky Arcobaleno called us all out, but this time its Brighteye business. Really, I envy myself in Heaven, because living as a Will is exhausting sometimes]_

So… what is it?

_[Do you know how to insert your Flames into someone else?]_

No.

_[If you don't know how to instinctually do it, that means you aren't supposed to do it my way. I inserted my Flames into people and stopped their physical functions. You aren't such a physical person, so I'm kind of curious because that means you do something else when you have your Flames in someone else]_

Will it be dangerous?

_[No, probably not. Just fling some Flame at the Mukuro guy. That's what the thing that woke me up told me to tell you to do]_

I sighed in my head, because really, who?

Bill?

Nah, he would have just grumped at me himself.

I sighed and decided to do just that—

_[Good, bye then! Love you lots, little Qin lookalike!]_

—and thank goodness that voice is gone.

Okay, so fling some Flame at Mukuro? And hope for something to work (like ordering my Flame to… merge with him or something? That sounds kind of bad. And unhealthy.) I've only heard of Flames ever coming out, not in.

So I suddenly dashed forward with my little ball of Star Flame so that I was behind Reborn, then made it fly really fast towards Mukuro. Then remembered it could go invisible, so ordered it to be invisible halfway there (Reborn shot me a _look_) and fervently wished that it would go _in, in, in…_

There was a moment where I could hear Mukuro's thoughts as clear as mine.

Mukuro's eyes were staring at Chrome in wonder and awe, as she melded his illusions with her own, and I could feel how Mist Flames worked, as Mukuro kept managing his illusions and accommodating Chrome's power that felt so warm and pure in light of his own…

'_This Flame feels so peaceful!' _Mukuro's head was shouting straight into my own, as I saw him through my eyes and Chrome through his eyes and my head was splitting in half with pain, '_It's healing my heart? How can it be?'_

…Healing his…heart?

Reborn was looking at me with alarm.

"Alice… what?"

Unknowingly, I had knelt down and my forehead was stuck to the ground. I couldn't move my head at all. Actually, my whole body couldn't move, as my brain was telling me to move my head just so to look at Chrome, and I couldn't because Chrome wasn't beside me she was ten metres to the front

"I'm ready, Mukuro-sama!" Chrome shouted, and I heard it through two sets of ears before with a soft gasp of air, I disconnected with my body completely.

My consciousness was splayed out on some type of stone floor, heaving in breaths like I ran a ten kilometre marathon sprinting without a stop, and the pain started fading.

I scowled at the ceiling.

Not dangerous my ass.

After heaving one large breath, I sat up _(ow)_, and looked around.

I think…

I was in Mukuro's mind.

* * *

I stood up and started wandering.

Well, what else was I supposed to do?

My skin had a grey tint to it, and I supposed it was because my Star Flame that I merged with Mukuro was making up this 'body' now. So I was this weird diaphanous entity because I was kind of… floating? But not?

I realised I only had to will myself forward like I will my Flames to do things to move. So I just crossed my legs and floated around.

Mukuro's mind was one huge long walkway.

It was of great architectural beauty, high arches, Grecian columns all in shades of monochrome. There wasn't any colour at all, no doors on the side where the arch touched the side where a building should have been.

On the other side of the columns was just plain barren fields, a lifeless African savannah. All white, grey. So I looked back to the endless walkway instead.

It reminded me of church entrances, of those scenic paths built into the building so you could appreciate the beautiful gardens beyond but instead… there was nothing.

Empty, echoing silence.

I floated continually forward, not knowing what I was doing. It was pretty much hit and miss, really, and it took me awhile to realise that the weird black shadows of the columns weren't weird black shadows at all.

They were doorways.

I smirked humourlessly at it, as it was really disturbing in this place. If I breathed, my exhale would echo for decades.

That type of silence.

…So I'd been passing hundreds of hidden doorways.

I had been thinking this mind had been much too straight forward for Mukuro. Now it had become _infinitely_ more complex. Especially if all these doors went to all different places. I'd been floating for… awhile now? (My star body didn't exactly have a watch) so I'd just decided to screw my reservations and open a door.

It was a mistake.

The minute my feet touched the shadow, I didn't even need to open or bend down or will myself or anything.

Those black things were more than mere doors.

They were _traps._

As expected, of course, of an illusionist's mind.

* * *

The inside was completely dark, and I think the only reason I wasn't well, smothered was because my body was literally made of light. So in this little black trap thing I just continued floating forward, but this was even more creepy because imagine infinite darkness all around you. Literally, and the only thing you could see was yourself.

So I stuck my hands forward, and continued floating 'forward'.

I didn't feel like I was moving, but at least… it was the thought that counts?

Literally?

So in that eternity, or, a minute, I wondered what Mukuro's mind told me of his character.

…He was a misunderstood, emo, dark, broody, tormented individual who holds infinite _depth_ in his soul.

Who has a boring, trap filled mind because everything was dead in here.

Even I had trees and spontaneous thought. He had nothing.

No people, no friends, no past, and definitely no thoughts. Mukuro was either just that good at not thinking, or his brain was tightly controlled.

Probably the latter. Mukuro schemed too much to be simple minded.

It was when I started dying of boredom and began to do cartwheels in the darkness/air that I realised that I wasn't the only dot of light.

There was a glimmer of light below me.

Oh my gosh! Maybe it was someone else!

Excited, I willed myself to go as fast as I could towards it, and realised it wasn't a glimmer of light. It was a reflection.

I didn't risk touching it, but I tried to make my light glow as bright as possible, and realised that the water was actually _water_. Not, black gloop, or weird black trapdoors.

There was something underneath that, actually. Weird shadows underneath the surface of the very, very still water.

Brightening my Flame as far as it would go, if I could breathe I was sure I would have been hyperventilating.

Because underneath that water, was a perfectly preserved corpse of a beautiful lady that looked vaguely like Mukuro.

I wheeled back with a startled cry, and my light shone on a wider area, and next to the lady was another corpse, and another one, and another one, and another one, all dead, all perfect, and all had their eyes wide and open, staring accusingly upwards.

At _me._

I immediately tried to desperately claw upwards as fast as I could go.

Willing myself faster and faster until I could only see a glimmer of my reflection, I started to will myself upwards as much as possible. As far away from them as I could.

Damn it, I wanted _out_.

Flying towards the ceiling at the fastest I could go as a flicker of Flame, I finally met the 'ceiling', a glutinous black thing that I dove into, because on the other end was the ceiling of the hallway that I had been in before. The goop filled my metaphorical lungs, and illogically, I felt like I was being suffocated before finally my head broke free and I was once again floating over the black gate.

I felt like the corpses could still see me, through that dark, dark gate and I quickly flew out the corridor and into the black and white plain, leaving the dark doors behind.

* * *

Reborn bent over Alice, as he gently shook her shoulder.

No response.

Figuring she was just knocked out cold, he stood over her body and kept watch on the battle as Tsuna faced the middle Vindice, the one whose watch wasn't broken by Mukuro's and Chrome's attacks.

Alice would understand if he kept their plan going, but Alice wasn't safe.

"Gokudera, move her over and try to wake her up," Reborn ordered, and the bomber was quick to agree.

And Reborn continued observing Tsuna, who was _stupidly_ trying to protect the Boss Watch.

The idiot.

"Baka-Tsuna!" He yelled, eyes full of his flying student. "Don't care about the Boss Watch! Win against him with your Dying Will!"

Tsuna looked down at him, and even he could see how shocked Tsuna was at his words.

But wasn't it clear?

Maybe it was, to him, with Alice's future in his head. There was no point, really, in keeping the Boss Watch. Now was the time for survival.

"What?" Tsuna questioned, angling his body so that the Vindice and Reborn were all in his view at once. "What are you saying, Reborn? Your curse will never vanish!"

Reborn gave a dry smirk.

"Didn't Bermuda already go over that with you? There is no curse. There is no freedom."

The Vindice had completely stopped attacking, and Tsuna used this to his advantage to listen closer to Reborn.

"But Reborn," his stupid student sounded much too emotional for his own good, "we'll never find that third way we talked about if I lose here!"

Reborn smiled.

"But it'd be worse to see you lose in such a weak and pitiful way." Tsuna's flames started in the air, and Reborn suddenly had everyone's collective attention. "To tell the truth, this is what started everything."

Tsuna wasn't even ashamed to see his own test being brandished to the world (well, a perfect zero was hard to do in all accounts) as he was, well, busy being hopelessly surprised.

Reborn was truly one of a kind.

"Wha…? My test?"

Verde looked like he was in pain.

"Perfectly wrong…"

Mukuro just sniffed. "Awful." Chrome next to him hid a smile behind her hand, grass crunching underneath her feet as she went to stand next to Mukuro.

"I was about to reject Checker Face's offer to participate in the representative war when I found this in my pocket. And I thought, 'I must make Tsuna stronger'. First his guts. It might be a good idea for him to partake in this war."

Tsuna stared down at the man, past the weird cosplays, the weird puns and jokes, the mask that Reborn had built to protect his sanity when he changed into a baby. Into the man he was when he was the best Hitman in the world.

"It you lose in a battle of Dying Will, I won't acknowledge you, Tsuna!"

Tsuna faltered, but Reborn was unyielding.

"Understood?"

Tsuna bowed, straightening up to stare at the last remaining Vindice, the determination to fight to the death in his eyes.

"Yes."

And that was all Reborn needed.

Unknown to them all, Bermuda watched this exchange from far away, his chuckles echoing in his large cavern. "Tsunayoshi Sawada's eyes have changed… my instincts have not dulled after all."

He smiled.

"Reborn is truly interesting after all." He turned away from the mirror, and stared into a black portal. "Let's go, Jager. We have… things to do."

And they stepped through.

Back at the fight, Gokudera was feeling more and more panicked as he failed again and again to find a pulse.

"You stupid girl… Freaky eyes, don't you dare die this type of pathetic death on us, I'm sure this is all fake and you're alright because you're that type of person please just wake up before Juudaime finishes his fight…"

Tsuna roared as a tiny dot in the sky, as he flew to prove his resolution in his Family, he friends, and his mentor.

He shook her hard, the cigarette between his teeth burning his lungs as he breathed in.

And she didn't wake.

* * *

I was floating around, you know, when I realised that the corridor place was actually part of something huge. Something _really really _big. The white building was taller that the nonexistent cloud line.

So I decided to see what was on top.

So I floated, and floated, and floated until at the top of the building was a small ledge.

And on that ledge was a small box.

That small box was locked.

I had the niggling feeling that the key that Mukuro was seeking would open this box.

But… what key?

I scanned the whole area (black…black white grey grey grey ooooooh, was that a light grey over the horizon there?) until at the very peripheral of my vision I saw a splotch of green.

Yes.

Green.

Because non-physical bodies can actually move quite fast, I was there approximately in five minutes.

And all curled up in the new shoots of grass in this barren land was a little, kid Chrome.

"Hello," little Chrome said.

I settled down, floating above the grass.

"Hi."

Little Chrome tilted her head, her fingers brushing the grass beneath her.

"You aren't supposed to be here yet."

"Yet?" I repeated, raising an eyebrow. "I thought going into other people's minds was something that people don't appreciate."

Chrome smiled.

"Well, he wouldn't like it, of course," she replied, dreamy like. "But you're needed here, but later. After he realises."

I wasn't mistaken, I thought with wide eyes. Chrome was actually exuding yellow light. Like the sun. Chrome just waved a hand at me to recapture my attention, and I kind of smiled back, uncertain?

"Realises what, Chrome?"

"His key."

"And… what's his key?" I said, trying to pull some grass like she was doing, but my hand just phased through. So as a Flame construct I couldn't touch things?

"Secret."

Heh.

"Okay then. Can you tell me how to get out of here?"

Little Chrome gave me a wide smile, and didn't even bother replying as she leaned forward and flicked me on the forehead.

And in a whirl of monochromes and green, she was gone.

* * *

I woke up to Gokudera's worried face before he forced a scowl.

"Keh. I knew you were just faking it."

Uh… faking what?

"Juudaime just finished his fight with the Vindice. We should pack up soon, and you should go back to the crazy disciplinary leader.

It was surprisingly hard to breathe, like my lungs had stopped working for a couple of minutes… or something. But I sat up anyway, and looked at Tsuna watching the three Vindice he had defeated crawl back into their black portals and disappear.

Tsuna's face as he turned around was full of pensive thought.

Gokudera flumped back next to me, as the watches _beeped_ to show that the battle time was over.

Yamamoto meandered over and sat on my other side, watching Tsuna's slow walk to Reborn.

He stopped in front of Reborn.

"…Reborn," he said plaintively, "did you really not care about removing the curse at all? I know you said there was always a third way, but you… don't really seem like you're trying to find it at all. I know that no matter whether we win or lose, you would either die or become a Vindice but…" Tsuna faltered. "I thought we agreed not to give up."

Reborn gave a tired smirk.

"Well, Tsuna. Ever since I became like this, I've never expected to die a decent death."

Tsuna exploded.

"You _are_ thinking about dying! We said—"

"Tsuna."

Reborn's tone brooked no argument.

"You don't have to die for us Arcobaleno. I have to organise an Arcobaleno meeting, anyway…"

Reborn didn't bother finishing his sentence, because was staring at him in disbelief.

"How can you say that?" Tsuna exclaimed.

Reborn raised an eyebrow. "Hm? Tsuna… Why are you mad?"

Tsuna stared back. "It's obvious! You suddenly show up saying that you're a tutor and want to make me into a Mafia boss!"

Reborn looked taken aback, actually stepping back from Tsuna as he continued to rant.

"And then it's all just been a mess! You used your Spartan training on me, made me confess my love to the girl I like against my will, dragged me out even though I didn't want to and forced me to have fun or fight with people! You made a _disaster_ of my school life!"

Silence.

"But… If I look back even as close to yesterday… in the end I had fun. I," Tsuna looked at Reborn in the eye, "really had lots of fun." Then his resolution wavered as he quickly looked to the ground beside Reborn. "Sometimes, well… quite often, I even feel happy that I got you as a tutor yet _why did you say you've never expected to die a decent death?"_

Reborn stared up at Tsuna, face serious.

"Have you been thinking like that the whole time you've been at my side?" Reborn made as if to answer, but Tsuna ploughed through it. "Even when we were all having fun, you were thinking about something so _sad? _You're a _failure_ as a home tutor!" Tsuna yelled, before quieting down.

"Juudaime…" Gokudera murmured, shifting, but Yamamoto reached over me and pushed him back down. I gave him an appreciative glance.

We all knew.

Verde, Mukuro and their group had already made their retreat. They felt as outside this conversation as us, but even more so, I guess.

This is just… so raw. And private.

Reborn still didn't respond. Just stared emotionlessly at Tsuna's face, and that seemed to answer Tsuna's questions for him.

Tsuna grit his teeth.

"This time… I will teach you…" He stared at Reborn, before kneeling down. "Reborn."

"Hm?"

I held my breath.

"I'm not going to let you die."

And Tsuna's eyes burned of conviction, doubt and frustration, even as he shot up and raced out the park.

Gokudera and Yamamoto immediately moved to follow, but I quickly grabbed them and shook my head.

"Freaky eyes, you stupid, let go of me!"

I shot him a glare, while Yamamoto just waited for me.

"Tsuna doesn't need that, right now. He's going home. Act normal for him. He'll need you all, really soon."

I stared into their eyes.

"Go home."

Yamamoto stared after Tsuna, before looking at Reborn and I, and nodded.

However, there was no placating Gokudera, so Reborn gave him a kick to the head and some snark. He eventually gave in, and us three left the park together in uneasy silence, as two of us worried about Tsuna, and I worried about how he would react.

Surprisingly, we had set up the perfect stage after all.

_Tsuna…_

We were all in various states of 'thinking about Tsuna' from Gokudera (fanatic mode) to me (calm mode) when I revised the decision to go home.

"No wait, you two, come with me to the hospital." I sniffed. "You two are losing way too much blood. And you both have head injuries."

Yamamoto laughed, Gokudera cursed, and I knew that us three would be able to support Tsuna anytime he decided to make his move.

* * *

Tsuna raced back home, his thoughts full of scenarios that even _he_, the classroom idiot, knew would fail. Where was that third way that Reborn promised?

He knew, he _knew_, okay, that he was nothing without Reborn. He wouldn't be anything, wouldn't have friends, wouldn't have a family and responsibility, but he was… _Reborn_. He was the baby who wasn't actually a baby and helped him throughout these two years to become so much more.

_Yet Reborn…_ Tsuna bit his lip. _What are you saying?_

An image of Reborn.

'_You don't have to die for us Arcobaleno…'_

"What the heck!" Tsuna cried out to the street, his yell empty as he pounded his fist against a wall. All these ideas, all discarded.

Reborn was his friend, and he would never, never _ever_ just accept a death so easily. He promised. He will never let this go.

He would fight, and fight, and fight…

Tsuna gritted his teeth, as he stared unseeingly at the pavement under his feet because he was just so _useless_, just Dame-Tsuna all over again, unable to do anything, unable to finish anything because realistically, _what can he do?_

* * *

Tsuna reached his house, and he was surprised at Iemitsu's friendly face, as he hadn't slept yet.

"Nana has slept, but I stayed up for you just in case you were hurt. But that doesn't seem to be the case, so I'll just head up now." His father gave him a solemn look, before clapping him in the shoulder. "I know we aren't allies anymore… but fight your best, Tsuna."

Then Iemitsu stepped away, and Tsuna couldn't help but notice the slight limp in his father's walk from yesterday's Vindice attack.

He went to his room silently and changed. Got into bed, but couldn't lie down. Couldn't sleep.

He waited for Reborn to come leaping through the window singing an '_it was a joke, Dame-Tsuna. Of course I wouldn't be serious about dying_' and set explosives on him but the window didn't open. The room stayed silent. The hammock in the corner hung empty, and Tsuna couldn't sleep.

* * *

"Now that I think about it… every time something was bothering me, I asked Reborn for advice."

Saying it out loud didn't stop the words from whirling around his head.

"I feel thirsty," he said reflexively as he swung his feet off the bed and headed for the door, because if he didn't Reborn would wake and all these traps would spring up. But Reborn wasn't there, so he walked trap free down the stairs into the kitchen.

Surprisingly, the fridge door was open.

Tsuna raised an eyebrow.

"Lambo?"

Lambo looked up at him with an exaggerated "Sshhhh!"

Tsuna blinked.

"Eh? What… are you doing?"

Lambo gave him a clueless cow-eyed look.

"Lambo-san wanted to drink Basil's strawberry juice," he said, holding up the juice. Tsuna just stared at it.

"Why Basil's?"

"Because Lambo-san's juice is grape, so he wants to know what Basil's strawberry juice tastes like."

Tsuna could wrap his head around that type of logic, but really… "Lambo, but that's not yours."

Lambo twisted the cap and drank it while Tsuna was still stuttering. Tsuna gave a shriek of alarm. "Ah! Don't drink it Lambo!" Tsuna watched, hands not knowing what to do as Lambo set down the bottle of juice and stared stupidly past his shoulder.

"Tastes like strawberry…" he said tonelessly.

"Of course!" Tsuna exclaimed loudly.

In response to that, Lambo just gave a small idiotic smile and put a hand to his lips.

"Shh!"

"Sh, the heck!" Tsuna dismissed. "You're a thief!"

Lambo untwisted the bottle of grape juice and stared intensely as he poured the grape juice into the strawberry juice bottle. "It's okay, Lambo-san will fill it up with his grape juice."

Tsuna cringed.

He had a bad experience with mixing juices when he was younger. Mango orange shouldn't be mixed with Tomato and beetroot.

"That's not okay!" He watched in horror as Lambo just glugged the mixture down. "It will taste different!"

Lambo froze.

Tsuna expected the worst.

"It's good!" And with that, Lambo slammed the two juice bottles back into the fridge and ran around the corner, yelling 'perfect!'

And Tsuna could only watch with slight jealousy. Partly because Lambo mixed juice with no negative results, and partly because he wished his problems would solve as easily as Lambo's.

He laughed.

He _wished_ things could be perfect just by filling up the missing juice. The perfect cover up, retopping the…

The missing juice?

Tsuna's eyes widened.

_The missing part?_

…_Filling… up the missing part?_

"Ah!" He exclaimed, as his intuition went hyperdrive. How could it be so easy? He saw it now, could it be that the third way Reborn had given up on…

Tsuna flew to the home phone, and Lambo peered down the stairs and huffed when he couldn't see the phone or Tsuna.

But it seemed like Tsuna was doing fine.

Lambo nodded, and went back to the room he shared with I-pin, because I-pin would have stolen all the blankets by now.

The meanie.

* * *

The next morning, Tsuna house was full to the brim. Fon had brought our battler watches on request, and when he arrived with Hibari (Hibari took one look at all the people and absconded to the roof) he was… shocked to say the least.

Fon gave me a pleasant smile.

"What is this, Alice?"

I gave a shaky twitch back, because for some reason his smile was scarier than his frown.

"Tsuna gathered everyone for an alliance against Bermuda."

At that, Fon raised an eyebrow at the motley crew.

Byakuran and Iemitsu, Mukuro and Hibari, Xanxus and Tsuna all in the same vicinity without killing something (cough each other cough). Enma just sat between the CEDEF and Mukuro, calmly analysing the situation (Enma was surprisingly more calm than people suspected, most of the time). Dino was there too, and when he noted me he paled and pointed to Mukuro.

I just indicated he was on the roof and Dino kind of wilted in relief.

Oh Dino. I snickered, as Tsuna brought the room to order.

He'd already been to the hospital to talk to Gokudera and Yamamoto (and me, who was sleeping very uncomfortably on a chair) in the late morning, being the last to know of his plans.

Of course, Gokudera was extremely depressed until Tsuna gave his 'oops, I did something wrong' face.

"Well," Tsuna said in a somewhat adorably hesitant way, "I think I'm unconsciously dependent on Gokudera, Yamamoto, onii-san, Dino, Alice and Hibari-san…"

Gokudera had blanked until Tsuna continued.

"It's embarrassing to say, but… somehow I'm automatically sure you'll just… uh, help me. For some reason I kinda see you as family."

And he thought we would be insulted.

Just like Tsuna 'kind of' saw us as family, Gokudera 'kind of' flung himself at Tsuna without regard for all the IVs and wires and faceplanted on the floor painfully. He righted himself, of course, and Tsuna stood in front of the three of us explaining his plan.

Of course we supported it, though I insisted that (since I wasn't injured) I had to go to the meeting.

"I have some critical info that will make beating him easier," I just shrugged.

Tsuna looked at me like I was a godsend.

"That'll be great, Alice! Wait, I don't have to pay, right?"

I smirked, even as Gokudera growled at me if I even dare make Juudaime pay for a cent.

"No."

Tsuna sighed in relief and ran to tell Dino.

Gokudera stared at Tsuna's back.

"I feel like I'm being left behind by Juudaime. I don't like it." Gokudera glared at his injured hands. "I have to improve more."

Yamamoto smiled.

"Well… I'm really happy to see Tsuna this way. His decisive, but calm. I feel like I can safely follow him."

The dawn light was making this needlessly sentimental so I stood up and gave a stretch.

"I'm going to his house for the meeting. You guys head there later. It's still not for some time. Get some entertainment or some rest in the meantime." I nodded at the crap television they provided in the hospital. "And you're right. Tsuna's changed."

Gokudera gave a tight smile.

"Of course for the good!"

I gave a small laugh as I walked out the door, already calling Fon and telling Grey that it was probably safer now, so he could go back to the apartment.

Everything was ending today.

So now, here we were, every main fighter crowded in the living room as Ryohei, Gokudera, Yamamoto and I stood behind Tsuna like this not-so-scary thug group as Tsuna exclaimed to them all, "Please! Fight with me!"

And yeah, the absolute silence afterwads.

Totally not awkward guys.

Totally not awkward.

* * *

Tsuna explained the situation once again, how he had this plan to inject the Pacifiers with Flames so that the Arcobaleno don't die when Checker Face takes the Flames to create new ones. How beating Bermuda was absolutely essential.

Yamamoto was, although quite solidly put, was still quite injured so I just told him to lean on the wall. Casually.

You know, so that you looked stylish while still conserving energy.

Yamamoto gave a small smile again, before he did that, while Tsuna just, in the most tactful way of course, blurted, "I know that I can trust you."

To a bunch of mass killers and Mafia and well. Guys that have tried to kill him multiple times.

This world was crazy.

The supposedly normal Tsuna even more so.

But I digress.

"But aren't we a bit too many? As strong as the enemy may be, if Tsunayoshi-kun and I use our fill powers, we can win together." Byakuran shot me a friendly wink, and I sighed. Tsuna shook his head.

"No. It can't work, Byakuran."

I remembered this was where it went downhill from here. I stepped forward.

"Tsuna, remember how I said I have crucial information?"

Tsuna blinked at me.

"Boss," I flatly stated, and Tsuna had raised _both_ eyebrows at me and his eyes were very very wide. First time I said it? "May I tell them the battle strategy?"

Tsuna had no idea what strategy I had. I told him to hold it off until I told him the info, but now he realised that we never had the time.

But Tsuna trusted me, so he gave me a confident nod and a grim determined face.

I looked at the room full of overpowered shounen antagonists.

Joy.

"The Vindice are powered by, arguably, the strongest Arcobaleno of all time. His name is Bermuda." I sat down neatly, sitting down next to where Tsuna would sit at the head of the table. I was careful not to undermine his authority. "He invented the Black Flame, the Flame of the Night by his blind hatred of Checker Face. To do what Tsuna wants us to do needs us to immobilise him and the Vindice."

Byakuran rolled his eyes.

"Tsunayoshi-kun _told_ us that already, Alice!"

I gave him an amused look, before continuing.

"No-one has to worry about anyone except Bermuda."

Tsuna stiffened behind me.

"What?" Iemitsu, who had been silent until now, asked. He was the veteran in the room, and his first active participation sparked the CEDEF's official interest.

I nodded.

"Bermuda is the only one who can create the Flame of the Night. As we saw, Tsuna," I inclined my head to draw attention to Tsuna, "Bermuda was offering to save Reborn. We know that Reborn himself wouldn't be able to sustain such hatred, but Bermuda was confident in his ability to become Vindice because he would inject Reborn's Pacifier with it."

Tsuna nodded. "That's my logic to save the Arcobaleno."

"Yes," I agreed, wishing that someone would open more windows or something. So many people in any room made it stuffy. It wasn't as if the day was particularly windy either, and the sun was actually warm today. "Since Reborn wouldn't be the type to hate someone so much, it would stand to reason Bermuda would have to continue injecting Flames into the Pacifier for Reborn to continue to survive as a Vindice if he ever becomes one."

I kind of saw the smart people make the connection in the room. Pretty obvious. Like, _oh, that makes sense_ type of face.

They kept silent though.

Sadly.

Over reactions made things interesting.

"So Jager, and the other Vindice all require Bermuda's constant injections for the Black Flame if they use it for fighting. They will be going all out from now on, so Bermuda would be a constant presence. So," I glanced at Tsuna, "It doesn't matter if Jager seems to have limitless power, he doesn't matter."

"Why?" a random CEDEF member asked.

Gokudera scoffed.

"Remember the rules. The Arcobaleno cannot interfere with the fight."

I gave a humourless smile.

"Exactly."

Byakuran just looked impatient now.

"Then why do you need _so many of us?_"

I shrugged. "Other than the fact that we need as many people as possible to inject Flames and start the next Pacifiers, it's also because Bermuda is the strongest Arcobaleno alive. He won't go down that easily, and Skull's watch still has around a minute left. Also, we have to tire them down so that they have low reserves of Black Flame."

And we all knew, of course, what devastation a minute could bring in battle.

"So the ones who thirst to battle strong opponents, you can volunteer now to fight Bermuda in that one minute. It'll be fast, quick and brutal. After hanging on to that one minute, and defeating Bermuda, Checker Face would come."

Tsuna stared at me.

I raised an eyebrow.

"To be honest, I thought that we wouldn't win. But I called you all here anyway, because…"

Enma cut in with a soft smile.

"Tsuna, you never had any intention to lose."

Byakuran laughed. "It's times like this that make Tsunayoshi-kun scary~"

Xanxus glared.

"I get to be the one who faces of that piece of shit."

Hibari jumped off the roof in the same second that Mukuro stood up to protest.

"No, me."

Mukuro and Hibari took a few private seconds to snarl at each other in an, obviously, mature way while I just shrugged.

"Okay, Xanxus, Mukuro, Hibari, you'll be the first ones to fight." Byakuran raised his hand, and I nodded and added his name to the list. "CEDEF?"

"We'll be backup."

"Dino?"

"Illusions."

"Enma?"

"We'll be in charge of backup and forcing them to chase."

I paused.

"Tsuna?"

He glanced down at me, and smiled at the room.

"I will engage with the Arcobaleno and lead the chase."

…Well, Tsuna certainly had an eye for diplomacy. Xanxus hated his guts, Mukuro didn't want to work with him again, Hibari certainly didn't want to feel like he was following a Boss that wasn't himself (Byakuran wouldn't mind either way). To declare himself support was just the best option.

Fon in the corner smiled.

"So Reborn doesn't know about this?"

Tsuna turned pleading eyes on him.

"Please don't tell him."

Fon shook his head.

"I won't."

* * *

The next fight dawned around midday, and all the fighters were congregated on the hill, while the backup were hidden in the forests. Four Boss watches (Verde's, Mammon's, Colonello's, Fon's) in a clear field was perfect bait. (Colonello lent his Boss watch to Byakuran. No-one made much of a fuss about it when the fighters all seemed to agree).

The Watch beeped the time.

Bermuda and all four Vindice stepped out of a portal.

I didn't bother hiding as I switched on my watch, and spoke clearly into it.

"Tsunomichi, if Bermuda is supplying the Vindice with Black Flames for them to fight, does that constitute as interference?"

The Vindice froze, as Tsunomichi popped out of nowhere to nod brainlessly. "Toot toot! Yes, it is! Unless the Arcobaleno watch is activated, interference isn't allowed! Bermuda, please step off your team!"

Bermuda shot an hateful glare my way, and teleported right in front of me.

"You are a pain in the neck. But we have larger reserves than you think."

Right then, all the Vindice stabbed our fighters.

They dissipated into illusion.

Well, me too.

I was safely at the hospital, and was watching the scene by some cameras I had installed.

Bermuda whirled around angrily, and spotted Tsuna and Enma standing there.

The chase was on.

* * *

Yamamoto and Gokudera provided backup, Ryohei was there just in case he was needed (we had more than enough watches adding Iemitsu's and Fon's extra watches) and the Shimon were helpful in slowing down, and making the Vindice tire.

We weren't looking for a fight to win.

We were looking to make them chase.

Both Tsuna and Enma are quick. Arguably the quickest in all the Bosses.

It felt like it took five minutes.

In reality, it was more than thirty. It was a good thing the fight had no time limit.

"The Vindice have more reserves than expected, but three of the four have already stopped teleporting. Only Jager and Bermuda are left," Adelheid reported, panting.

"Okay, tell your group to fall back." I heard Adelheid shout something to the rest of the Shimon and some shouts from Gokudera and Yamamoto as they retreated. Ryohei didn't have that luxury, as the healer.

Just in case.

I tuned in to Enma and Tsuna's headsets. They had made sure to keep far, far away from the hospital so I wouldn't get compromised.

"Tsuna, Enma, You go back to the meeting spot. Only Jager and Bermuda are after you now."

They both grunted, too out of breath to really say anything, but their trackers suddenly veered back to the original clearing where the _real_ copies of our four main fighters were.

In three minutes they reached it. I could go back to watching it on my screen.

Tsuna and Enma were exhausted, and when they dropped to the middle of the field, Iemitsu and the CEDEF immediately took their positions around them and tried to shuffle them away, while the four main fighters immediately surrounded the two.

The rest of the Varia were behind him, while Hibari had Fon on his shoulder, and Mammon was floating somewhere. Byakuran had no-one, but Mukuro had Fran on the side. He was flexing his glove again.

In a few more teleports, Jager showed his amazing fighting ability, cutting Squalo deep in the leg, Xanxus _nearly_ losing his arm, and Hibari failing to catch him and getting hit in the back instead.

Ryohei stepped up and reattached Xanxus's arm in two seconds and disappeared again.

Xanxus didn't even stop to think, just launched himself at Jager when he suddenly disappeared and appeared at the edge of the clearing.

"He ran out of Flames at _last_," Enma panted through the line.

"Yes. He wouldn't use them all, as even movements costs some, I think. If he uses too much, he'll die. Keep an eye on him and the rest."

"Yes."

Enma conferred with his Family, and some of Dino's, as Bermuda gave a lowly laugh, and used himself to transform.

He was dangerous (and a bit silly looking) but just when it seemed like he was going to overwhelm the four (who were overwhelmed already, it was just that Tsuna couldn't get over his hero complex and dived in, as well as some other well-meaning strong fighters that kept them at bay) I connected another line to my makeshift communications table.

"Arcobaleno… now."

Colonello, Reborn and Fon changed into their adult forms and joined the fight.

It was kind of immediate chaos, because Fon was a close-range fighter, Reborn a mid, and Colonello a long ranged one.

They all had more than one minute left of their gift as well.

And at last, Bermuda lay on the floor, defeated, and Ryohei with his band of sun-Flame users rushed around trying to heal everyone when Checker Face appeared.

I switched off the screens, and started walking there.

It was going to take awhile, I huffed.

Damn I need more exercise.

* * *

I reached them just as Talbot had arrived bearing the jars to hold the new Pacifiers.

Bermuda was agreeing enthusiastically to bear the burden for the rest of eternity of keeping the Flames alight.

Everyone was happy happy joy joy.

(I honestly didn't know what was happening, for once. Things just went from, _'Hey, I hate'_, to _'yeah, I'll do it_', and then Checker Face (or Kawahira now), was like '_want me to reverse those curses now that you won't die?'_

And I found myself diving into the Arcobaleno circle.

"Wait!"

Kawahira raised an eyebrow at me.

"You're… one of the irregularities of the world."

I stared up at him.

Excuse me, but…

Huh?

"You are not supposed to exist."

Tsuna, even exhausted, drew a sharp breath at that.

"Alice is part of my Family. Don't you dare insult her like that."

Kawahira shrugged.

"It wasn't an insult."

The Arcobaleno just looked impatient, wanting to have the curse over and done with.

"What, kora!" Colonello growled, clutching Lal's hand close. "We're trying to get uncursed here!"

I blinked, and sat up quickly. "Colonello, make sure you shield Lal from the cure exactly like how you shielded her from the curse!"

Colonello raised an eyebrow.

"Why would I want to do that, kora?"

"Because when your curse disappears, you will still be infants."

Mammon gave an indignant squawk that rivalled a parrot's. "What?"

I nodded. "Though you can age. But Lal's curse is incomplete, and I heard that you two were planning to be married after this."

The two in question blushed from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes.

"N-n-no, guys, it's not like that!"

Reborn just smirked.

"Lal will get completely cured and turn back into a twenty something year old woman. You, however, will remain a baby. Although, of course, if you two still want to marry, its fine. But I just thought…" I shrugged. "It would be better if you two aged together."

Lal stared at me, before turning to Colonello.

He shrugged helplessly.

"How about it, Lal? It's your call. I just want what's best for you."

Lal blushed.

"Oh, Colonello…" (they started exuding mushy hearts around here), "I think… I would like to experience life with you again."

They hugged.

Reborn gagged and kicked them apart, and Kawahira, with a smile, just lifted their curse, Colonello protecting Lal, and Lal's curse marks were gone, while everyone took off their pacifiers.

And this, I reflected, totally calm, was a happy ending.

I didn't even bother noticing what happened next.

I dozed off.

And in my dreams, I saw Grandmama waving at me with Grandpapa, and my Aunt quietly reading a book and they all looked so happy together…

I smiled, even as I distantly felt Grey hoisting me up into a piggy-back (and my friend's concerned voices) and placing me carefully into the car.

Then it was a comfortable bed.

And I was out for real.

* * *

I was finally free!

I laughed, feeling like the top of the world. I snoozed through to twelve. I ate mangos and hashbrowns for breakfast at one. I watched lame cartoons and got sucked into my crappy romance novels.

Then the phone rang.

I answered it, for once, because Grey was busy napping, and it was the first time I've ever saw him nap in my whole life, so I left him to it.

"Hello? Alice speaking?"

Kusakabe's panicked voice filled my ear.

"Bright-san? Can you please tell me if you've seen Hibari-san since yesterday?"

I felt the pit of my stomach drop.

"What?" I asked, dread twisting around in my gut because I had a feeling… just a bit.

That my job wasn't over.

"Hibari didn't return to the hospital, the school nor his house yesterday, and the whole committee has searched Namimori, but no-one has found him, so I have started to call his acquaintances in hope…?"

I sat down with a flump.

No, please don't do this to me, I whimpered at the sky (and Bill).

But of course.

Nothing was ever easy.

* * *

**So yeah.**

**I am tired. But I got this chappie out on time! See, going on schedule again, haha.**

**This chapter got vaguer and vaguer as it went on. I feel extremely sorry for it, but still. I just got sick of the Bermuda arc so much. =="**

**Sleep well, guys! I hope you're not pulling late nighters like I am. ^^ How is the start of school for you guys? (and please review and maybe whip me back into shape and not be the lazy author that I am?)**

**XD**

**Love you guys lots!**


	68. Is taken, of course

Letter No. 32

Wend! Here I am, bugging you again. Aren't you glad?

(of course not)

Oh well. You still won't reply, huh? Just because you don't want to reply doesn't mean I can't send you letters, and you probably read them because you are bored anyway, so yeah, I've decided to just continue sending you letters until you give up and reply.

I am stubborn that way. Feel free to praise that particular trait in a reply.

Anyway, my official mission is finished, but for some reason, something just happened to make me feel very uneasy. Why does it seem my mission is still continuing even though I've… finished?

I hope you reply to that question, at least. It is much more important than questions about your favourite fruit.

I told Anise not to give you any mangos until you replied.

So you'll suffer from cravings until you give in!

From you ever loving friend,

Alice

(because I'm your friend and you know it)

* * *

"_Hibari, you know why you're here like this."_

_Hibari bared his teeth, glaring at the shadows where he _knew_ that bastard was sitting on his self-proclaimed throne. Violently wrenching his arms from the five people holding him back, he lunged forward to at least get one hit on that stupid smug bastard—_

_His arm was stopped half a metre into his lunge, and he was forced to the floor in headlock, with knees to his arms and another two people on his legs to keep him down._

"_Seems like you still haven't learnt your lesson. At least you took my top twenty men down."_

_There was a smirk in that voice. He knew it, and it just made him even more frustrated. He didn't want to be entertainment to him in any shape or form. That anger that had served him so well for so many years burned through him, lighting his Ring on his finger before another man gave it a twist so it fell off._

_Growling, he nearly uplifted the man on his left leg._

"_Okay, knock him out and put him back into his room," the voice said, standing up to move closer to him until all Hibari could see were his shoes._

_There was a sharp pain to the back of his head, and even Hibari couldn't blink away the black dots that swarmed his vision._

_Slowly, he fell into black._

* * *

You know the first thought that came up to my head after Kusakabe's call? I honestly just flipped the phone shut, sat down on the couch and rationalised that it couldn't be anything really plot related, because really, the plot was finished.

All that I was waiting for was Tsuna to rescue Kyoko and Haru from that construction site (which was really strange of them to walk into anyway) and have that inconclusive ending where Tsuna's all wishy washy with his romance, and decide not to be Vongola Neo-Primo, but to work towards it instead.

(Because that was what we had been aiming for, anyway).

Hibari probably just… abandoned Kusakabe and Nami-chuu to go mooch around the mountains with Dino or something.

Yeah. Probably.

Barring, of course, that I knew that Dino had gone back to Italy with Romario because Dino had called me with his usual dopey voice and happy laughter about some serious stuff that cropped up in Italy. And since Dino expected me to know about it already (which I didn't because I was busy packing up my equipment in the hospital) I looked it up.

The Cavallone base had been attacked by this Famiglia from Austria, for some reason or another (debts and some agreement and a murder, apparently) so Dino was desperately needed back at his home base. So, I let him go and told everyone at the hospital that he was going to leave (since Dino didn't have any injuries that I knew of).

The next few days were hectic. Most of the people could walk out of hospital in the next few days. Tsuna visited every day, and well, Tsuna dragged me out as well. So many strong people in the same vicinity was loud, very destructive (and therefore chaotic) and very lively. The Varia went back to Italy within five days, and Yuni with Byakuran and Gamma wanted to visit France because that was were Checker Face had retired, and Yuni wanted to find out a bit more about her heritage.

It kept going on like that, until the only ones left were Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryohei, me, Lambo and Tsuna. The Vindice just... disappeared, to spend eternity fuelling these pacifiers.

Everything was tied up into a big bow and ended pretty well for everyone. I was satisfied, Reborn was satisfied, and we gave a celebratory high five.

Reborn even offered me a marshmallow.

Reborn _never_ offers people marshmallows.

To say the least...

I was honoured to be part of the Marshmallow Brigade.

Gokudera and Yamamoto were so… happy.

It just uplifted my spirits even more.

So really, I brushed all my thoughts of Hibari away until about two weeks later. I returned home through the normal elevator (after four years, the people around the hotel and Japan who flew there just to meet me were confident I wouldn't disappear anywhere anymore. They were just mildly persistent now) and I saw Kusakabe sitting all rigidly in my plushy sofa while Grey poured tea, I was… well, the foreboding feeling came back.

"Kusakabe?" Tsuna asked over my shoulder, while Gokudera squabbled with Yamamoto as the elevator nearly closed on them. The chokes of 'baseball idiot!' and 'hahahahaha' were ignored as I moved to sit on my second most cushy chair, and when Tsuna trailed after me to sit on the sofa, Gokudera naturally scrambled to sit next to him.

I watched with mild amusement at this scene before Grey gave a polite cough.

Tsuna smiled brightly.

"Hello, Grey-san!"

Grey gave a smile for Tsuna, giving him a polite nod (which Tsuna still kind of blushed at, but not as much as when I accidentally shoved Tsuna into Kyoko this afternoon. Hana was no-where to be seen today, however, which was strange) before turning to me.

Gokudera grumbled.

"How dare you tell your butler to dismiss Juudaime…"

I gave him an unamused eyebrow (Grey could do whatever he liked and I wouldn't mind and everyone knew it) before turning to Grey.

"What's up, Grey?" I asked, picking up a cup of tea, and admiring the steam in the late afternoon light through the large balcony window to our right. Grey had opened all the curtains again. I'd always wondered why (since wasn't it a security risk?) but Grey just gave an enigmatic smile and said he liked the light.

I mean, I agreed, it made the leather sofa boil sometimes.

"Kusakabe-san wants your help in tracking down someone."

I shrugged.

"Sure. Have any money, Kusakabe?"

His large pompadour seemed to give a depressed droop. "I cannot promise you anything but my personal savings and all my personal holdings for the next ten years or more, if you require it. I am desperate for your help, Bright-san… or may I say, Brighteye as we are not on school premises?"

Tsuna took in a breath, his eyes immediately wide, Gokudera and Yamamoto shifting into defensive positions. I raised an amused eyebrow.

"How did you know that, Kusakabe-san?" Tsuna asked, shifting forward. "I've heard from Reborn that the more people who know who Alice is, the more in danger she is…"

And obviously told Gokudera and Yamamoto to protect me.

That's so cute it was almost annoying.

Okay, I _did_ get kidnapped a lot more and got a lot more injuries and seem to sneak off somewhere else and then get injured etcetera, but I can take care of myself!

Honest.

So I put down my tea calmly and put it back on the clear crystal tea-table. I've always liked seeing my feet through the table. Always wished for one with my little brother in my first life, but we were hardly rich enough to give thought to such luxuries.

"Tsuna, most of the people in this hotel know who I am. Reborn was just trying to get you used to thinking about important figures in the mafia." Shrugging, I gave him a wry smile. "Most would be compromised, but as a Brighteye with affiliations with the Vongola, if I did get killed the person who assassinates me would have world head-hunt. It wouldn't be worth it."

Yamamoto frowned for a second before relaxing, a smile filling in ever-cheerful face and scratched the hair behind his ear.

"You shouldn't say that, Alice! I mean, haha, you could still die you know?"

I merely replied with a, "Gokudera understands," which the Gokudera in question threw me a glare because Yamamoto and Tsuna were both staring at him.

He gave a grunt.

"I was a VIP once too you know. I guess we all are now, but being undercover is the best if you're a big name. A big name like the Brighteyes who are mostly passive being discovered isn't as much of a deal as a mafia boss. Especially when they can get something from it, like information. It's obvious to any idiot out there."

Yamamoto gave a hum of assent.

Tsuna scratched the back of his head.

"I didn't think of it like that before," he said self-consciously and Gokudera's eyes widened.

"Juudaime! I didn't mean it like that, of course you aren't an idiot—"

He got cut off.

"I am here to address Brighteye-san," Kusakabe said and ignored everything to turn to me, even his refilled cup of tea. I picked my own cup again. "Hibari-san is still missing, Brighteye-san."

"I prefer Alice, Kusakabe," I replied flatly. "Why do you believe that I have that information?"

Kusakabe just chewed on his grass. "Your profile was as blank as Hibari-san's one even after a preliminary search, and that is very impressive. The Disciplinary Committee always had their eyes on you – they realised who you were and what you did around the second year of your stay in Namimori. It wasn't disturbing to the peace, so we ignored it. Now, we need your help."

I nodded. "Fair enough. Payment?"

Kusakabe just grimaced.

"I say the truth when I say that we do not have sufficient funds for a request towards you."

Tsuna leaned towards me.

"What does he mean?"

I looked at him.

"You know how on Sundays I'm never free?"

"Yeah?"

"I do business on Sundays. The more pay the faster the person's information request is done. I've never dealt in anything less than two million at a time."

Tsuna's (and Yamamoto's to an extent) face went slack.

"T-t-two _MILLION_?" He squeaked.

"Yeah."

I simply turned back to Kusakabe.

"Then I'll choose your method of payment after this mission, okay? As a friend to a friend."

Kusakabe had never looked so relieved.

"Thank you, Alice-san."

I finished my tea.

"No problem."

I was just getting up before Yamamoto gave a care-free laugh. "Okay then, you know we'll always back you up, but Alice, what about the homework we were supposed to do now?"

"Let's do it over dinner," I replied, heading towards my computer room, "I know we were planning to do it before but this came up." I shrugged nonchalantly.

"Just make sure you don't compromise Juudaime's marks for this!" Gokudera exclaimed, crossing his arms and staring at Kusakabe in a supposedly intimidating way, but really just kind of looked like one of those googly eyed squishy chickens where when you squish them their eyes pop out.

Heh.

Gokudera as a squishy chicken. That suited him.

Yamamoto smiled.

"I don't mind, Alice. We'll just start without you while we wait! I'm sure we'll be just fine."

I suppressed a snort.

As if.

Gokudera's explanations even flew over my (kind of university level) knowledge. Grey understood it though, but that's Grey.

"Just don't knock any vases over."

Tsuna winced.

"Okay, Alice."

Going to my room and reaching for the secret panel that hid a number security code that was fake and actually slid over for a thumb-print scan, I reached the card key to the computer room and a few other valuables that I kept in there, and locked it all up again, before going back to the computer room.

Just how I left it.

Kind of dusty, compared to the other rooms, but the air conditioning kicked in with some stale-ish air, my comfortable rolly computer chair, and I was all set.

After getting getting the computer all prepared and loaded up, I searched for Hibari. I was much better now, at finding stuff and using the Brighteye network than before, where I just didn't care and punched words in hoping to find a hit. I mean, the network was good enough so that that haphazard method _worked_, it was just faster, and more efficient now that I had years of experience.

So instead of about ten minutes, it only took around three to find a lead.

An agent at the international airport of Namimori spotted some irregular footage at a security camera – the people kept walking stiltedly every ten minutes. Tampering. Really really _good_ tampering. That agent was amazing, to have realised that it was tampered at all.

I checked which flights were leaving at the time. Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, New York… Then Tokyo reported the same tampering, and it continued, as they took a flight to Beijing, which… I couldn't track anymore, if I didn't contact the local Brighteye network.

There was a Brighteye in nearly every country. I was Japan's one, and there was one in England, four in America, five in Italy (because it was home base), and it was to be expected that there was a Brighteye in China too (there was one even in Antarctica, and I wondered what he did there. Stare at penguins all day?)

There was only one instance of another Brighteye contacting me for help to extract information from 'my turf', and it worked out fine even though I didn't really monitor my crime scene as religiously as others. I didn't need to. Japan had a few minor yakuza, a few gang leaders, some illegal drug scenes and stuff… but they didn't have anything really _major_, except Tsuna, and these two (actually really large) yakuza families based in Kyoto and Sapporo, and they had a healthy rivalry going on. All crimes were kept from the general public, etc.

I think that's why Iemitsu chose Japan for Tsuna to grow up in. In this world, Japan was quite calm in the crime scene, barring a few murders here and there.

China… was a whole new matter entirely.

I've heard rumours about the Brighteyes who held China as 'their turf' throughout the ages. The Brighteye connection with China was really strong, since it came from our founders. Even Anise looked up to them, because they were _on top_ of things like a few other people were. I definitely wasn't (even if I looked like it) and I had heard amazing things about how diplomatic that Chinese dude was. He made deals with seven rival triads at the same time, got out unscathed, and made a healthy profit to boot.

So I didn't really dare go into China without at least some knowledge of 'who what where', and sent the China guy an email instead on the lines of something like

_To Brighteye No.48 (Patrick Yu)_

_Hello! Someone in my mission got kidnapped to China, and I'm uncertain as to the direction. I'm sorry for not giving you proper greetings, but please reply if you can assist my cause. I would totally understand if you don't, since Anise paints you as a very busy person._

_Thank you for your consideration_

_Brighteye No.50 (Alice Bright)_

Of course, it had a lot more pleasantries and friendliness and family camaraderie that I wasn't bothered to get into, but that was the gist of it.

I nearly didn't hear the door creak open and close, and the soft footsteps behind me.

"Tsuna," I said because no-one else would dare go into my room except for Tsuna and Yamamoto, and Yamamoto was much heavier, "most people require permission to come in here."

Tsuna gave a laugh.

"Sorry, Alice! Grey was wondering about if dinner being in half an hour was okay?"

I nodded, not turning away from my computer.

"Yeah, it's fine."

There was a pause, and I turned my head around. Tsuna hadn't moved, and he was ogling my tech. Shouichi would be so envious. Whenever I came in here and I got frustrated, I would just imagine Shouichi's (or Spanner's I wasn't picky) and their reaction to so much technology that they _weren't _allowed to touch.

Heh.

The thought already made me smile.

"Wow. Alice… I-It never really hit me until now but you really are… an important person aren't you?" He stared around the room with wide-eyes, the air-conditioning ruffling his hair. This was one of the only rooms without windows. "You're all… rich and… smart and stuff. You even handle jobs with so much money on the side."

I sighed, turning around fully, and motioned Tsuna onto a cardboard box because no-one had ever been my guest in here, so there weren't any more chairs.

"You're rich too, Vongola Neo-Primo."

Tsuna flushed.

"Did Reborn tell you that? I decided not to call myself that you know? It sounds strange… and pretentious." Tsuna stuttered, turning to sit down on a dusty cardboard box. "I mean, I feel like other people should call me that, and not label myself like that when I haven't actually done anything and Alice, why are you laughing at me?"

I was hardly _laughing_ at him.

I was merely… hiding some smiles behind my hand.

"That's good. That's what we were hoping for."

Tsuna tilted his head in confusion, and I just turned back to the screen, sent the email and started searching about who Hibari was instead. I'd put it back long enough. Who was Hibari, really, that he could put down so many trained people without any 'formal training', who claimed to be just a normal school prefect (when he was clearly… not).

He dragged his box closer to where I was sitting as I processed the search. There weren't many 'Hibari's around… anywhere.

There was indeed a Hibari family which existed within Namimori, but they apparently died out twenty years ago when the sole daughter, Hibari Kokoa, married into another family. Her parents died two years after she got married in a freak accident. The Family that Hibari Kokoa married into was…

From China.

I raised an eyebrow.

Interesting.

Very, very interesting indeed.

Behind me, Tsuna sniffled.

"You turn the air-conditioning too cold, Alice!"

I suppressed a smile, as I replied as blankly as possible, "You're just delicate, Tsuna."

His splutters were worth it, as I carefully navigated websites trying not to leave a trace as I investigated _Hibari Kokoa_.

* * *

After a few minutes, I rolled backwards with a sigh, while Tsuna just kind of stared at the screen with a puzzled look on his face.

"I didn't understand half the text scrolling through the screen," he murmured, and I blinked.

Oh, right. He was still here.

Rolling to look at him in the eye, Tsuna's face looked kind of weirdly monochrome from my computer screens, but really… he was Tsuna. He was the Boss of the Vongola (or would be). He could help, maybe.

"Want to know what I found out about Hibari?"

Tsuna blinked at me, his ridiculous gravity-defying hair the only motion in this dusty dark room. I was in my post-research haze, just trying to sort through what I still needed to do, what I just saw, and how it was applicable to the client. Tsuna was presumably thinking Tsuna like things like _Kyoko_ and _I need to hide that piece of homework from Reborn_ from boredom. He had admitted it readily enough times for me to recognise that slightly glazed look.

"It's half an hour, Alice! You can share what you know at dinner!"

Oh, I realised with slight surprise, the clock did show that half an hour had gone.

I rolled my shoulders and lugged myself up, dragging Tsuna up in the process.

"Come on, Decimo. This is big stuff, and Grey's prawns are heavenly."

Tsuna struggled to get out of my grip, so I let go of the back of his shirt and watched him fall without much preamble because really, no one could get hurt with such a soft carpet. Not even Dame-Tsuna, who everyone knew could probably knock himself out in a padded room.

"Alice," he whined, "why did you do that for?"

I suppressed a smirk and replied in deadpan, "You were too slow."

Tsuna's eyes widened in mock horror.

"You sound like Reborn! That's really scary! One Reborn is enough for everyone!"

I snorted and opened the door.

"If Reborn heard that he would be setting up explosives in your room for weeks."

Tsuna _actually_ looked horrified and glanced around fearfully.

"How could I forget that Reborn has ears everywhere?" He whispered, already ducking to protect his head and nearly tripped over an electric cord.

I shrugged and went down the hallway to where Yamamoto was helping set the table, suppressing a smile.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Tsuna forgot all about it at dinner, as Kusakabe had left in the half an hour I was researching, as he, quoted from Grey 'could be more productive with his time' than sitting around for my results. Which makes sense, and that meant more prawns for me at dinner so I wasn't really that torn. Grey watched us three youngsters argue over homework questions over dinner (Tsuna splashed garlic sauce _all over_ his sheet) and they left with reassurances that we didn't have to drive them back home.

They liked walking, apparently.

Which was nonsense, as I reluctantly eyed the dish pile with a niggling sense of guilt that I should offer to help but was much too lazy to.

So I went and looked busy instead, shutting the computer room door behind me and just staring at the computer screen again.

Hibari Kokoa.

I had a horrible nagging suspicion that Hibari hadn't actually gone to train under waterfalls with an awesome Chinese martial arts master after all, and had gotten kidnapped to China instead.

Because that woman in that picture had the exact same nose as Hibari. I even overlapped the two pictures over one another, and they had the _exact_ same nose.

And eye shape, but the eye colour was different – Kokoa had nice brown eyes while Hibari had absolutely _evil_ silver kind of blue grey eyes. Kokoa seemed infinitely kinder anyway, no lines of brutality or hardship at all. Kind of a soft type of woman, and absolutely unlike any mother of Hibari I would have expected.

What I imagined Hibari's parents were like… were more like a giant hard ass man that swung around axes and lived in the mountains like a giant bear cave dude while the mother was a yakuza wife who blew smoke rings and wore sexy yukata off one shoulder. With, of course, awesome sword-wielding skills.

Not this nice, beautiful, gentle, house-wifey woman.

But of course, appearances are deceiving (as always, in Katekyo. Example in point – Reborn).

The Hibari family didn't have the most spotless record. In fact, they were a branch family from quite a powerful family in, yet again, _China_, but had spread to Taiwan and Hong Kong in the last twenty years from my rudimentary search this evening. However, they didn't do much in Japan, but Kokoa had returned to China to marry.

It was probably something like bloodline purity. _Most _probably, the best reason for it, to get a pretty eligible woman from another country just to marry.

Someone important then.

I could believe that.

Hibari's fighting skill and prodigiousness is much too extraordinary for him to be anything akin to normal.

And more than extraordinary is that I had to actually try to find who Kokoa married to.

(Of course I _found_ him, but it took awhile.)

A man who had inherited a major Triad twenty three years ago and needed to marry. He was twenty eight, Kokoa was twenty two. Hibari was born around sixteen/seventeen years ago.

This was my strongest lead. Now I only had to track his calls, find the most recent record of where he had been, get permission from the China Brighteye (Patrick wasn't one that I've met yet) and just… go.

Closing my eyes from the glare of the screen, I was torn between being excited at an interesting case _for once_, being put off because my job was seemingly not over, and niggling worry for Hibari.

Hibari was not weak. In fact, he was a monster by anyone's standards.

So the person who managed to take Hibari away from his beloved Namimori and keep him away despite all his resources and amazing ability… must be a greater monster than him.

China huh…

I frowned.

That wasn't going to be fun.

* * *

Of course, since that Chinese Brighteye guy (Patrick Yu, his file said, and he was surprisingly eighteen in this world, and had started managing China when he was _nine_. Like what, he probably had been someone extraordinary in his first life and didn't need as much training? Probably) was very on top of things and efficient, so around two hours after I had emailed him and when I was just thinking of switching off the computer, the computer told me an urgent email had arrived, and I clicked on it.

Of _course_ it was different from what I expected.

_To Alice (No.50)_

_Hi! You're so formal in your email, don't worry about those manners okay? Family is family, after all, even if we've never met each other we're still the only people who truly understand each other without secrets and well, can trust. So with that reply, I will cordially invite my favourite 'cousin' to China, Beijing or something yes? _

_Since you're like, nearly as young as me (I don't know how old you actually are, sorry) you probably have a caretaker as well. I'll send you two plane tickets, so that you two can board the plane the day after tomorrow. That'll be okay, right?_

_It's nice to finally talk to one of the younger looking Brighteyes! It'll be nice to seem like a mentor for once, instead of being mentored. _

_So looking forward to your arrival. Everything will be prepared for you, don't worry. Just bring some clothes._

_Patrick (No. 48)_

I grinned.

At least this guy wasn't a weird creep that wanted to train my to death/kill me/had weird death issues. A normal guy!

(who was also extremely capable, apparently had a silver tongue and whatnot. But indeed, family is family)

So I typed a reply saying yes, a plane the day after tomorrow would be especially nice, and hoping to see him there, warning him of my exceedingly western appearance that would surely attract attention.

Like, gray hair, white skin and yellow eyes people. Asians didn't look that way.

I pressed send, and went to bed.

Everything could be found today could be found tomorrow.

First.

_Sleep_.

Sleep is heavenly stuff. I was going to sleep for as long as possible, because I have this nagging suspicion I wouldn't get the chance… again.

So I flung myself on my bed after putting on some pajamas and curled all the extra soft blankets and pillows to my comfort.

Then blinked.

Gosh, I've become spoiled indeed.

I didn't even blink at extra rich crap anymore.

Well, I mused, Liza did say I would get used to it. _One day_.

Eh. Who cared. I closed my eyes and slept.

* * *

The next day after a normal day at school, I sat back down at my computer chair and gave a small smile at how uneventful it was.

"_Gokudera, stop!" Tsuna hiied as he stared at Gokudera who had had enough of Ryohei making Tsuna join the boxing club and challenged him to a duel._

"_HOW EXTREME!" Ryohei yelled in approval, eyes gleaming as he gave Gokudera a speculative glance. "WE SHOULD DO THIS MAN TO MAN!"_

_Gokudera gave a smirk, and spat to the side in an entirely practiced manner, if how he brushed his hair out of his forehead so that the sun could get maximum gleam on his hair and glance at Tsuna was to go by. Instead it was Yamamoto who gave an encouraging smile, as Tsuna was too panicked and I was too deadpan. Gokudera scowled at us and looked away._

_Some students looked around in fear that Hibari was going to teleport there and kill Gokudera for spitting on school grounds but no one came so they sighed in relief and just kept watching._

"_You wish, you boxing nut," Gokudera replied cockily, lighting a cigarette._

_Anyone who knew him knew that that was the start of the battle._

"_How… how… EXTREME! YES! LET'S DO THIS!"_

_Suddenly, Ryohei was in his boxing gloves, his eyes full of Dying Will And Determination And All Things Manly._

_Gokudera smiled and reached into his pockets._

_Tsuna made mild scream of despair._

"_Not in the corridor, or Hibari-san will _kill_ us when he comes back!" Tsuna wailed._

_Yamamoto laughed and was generally unhelpful._

_I lazily twirled a chopstick through my fingers and stared out the window unhelpfully._

_Kyoko was nowhere to be found to stop her brother. With Chrome, maybe?_

_Hana was on the side looking disapproving._

_Tsuna gave up and instead tried to redirect the battle towards the roof instead. At least there wouldn't be much property damage._

_Much._

_Tsuna gave a soul-heaving sigh, as Gokudera and Ryohei traded snipes and excited yells in front of him gearing for battle, and Yamamoto and I were talking about sushi and fish and all things exciting in the sushi world behind us._

_Gosh._

_Sometimes he wished his friends could be more normal._

Blinking, I booted up the computer and checked my email.

Sure enough, Patrick had sent me something back, and I was happy to accept it.

I stuck my head out the door.

"Grey!" I yelled, "we're going to China tomorrow! We're going to need to pack some clothes, but everything else is provided for!"

Grey emerged at the end of the corridor.

"I assume we're staying with Patrick?"

I blinked.

"You know Patrick?" I asked blankly, wondering when and if he did, maybe I would have seen him too?

Grey smiled, his moustache winching up at the corners.

"Patrick arrived a year before you, and left a month before you arrived to go to China. I helped him a little before I came to your side, along a few others."

Oh, of course! That made sense.

"That's awesome, Grey! You two can catch up. Is he nice?"

Grey chuckled.

"A very mature boy. Much more than you, Miss."

I proved his point by playfully scrunching up my face and just flung a 'remember that okay, I'll print out our boarding passes' and found it was a morning flight.

Oh great.

I harrumphed in my chair. Morning flights were pretty and all, but I had to get up so _early_. And it wasn't even that far from Japan to China anyway… A few hours, at most.

After sulking a bit, I snuck out the room and put the printed out boarding passes in the middle of the dinner table so Grey could see them before going back into the room and started searching.

And sighing, because I kept getting dead ends without some insightful more local knowledge from the Chinese base.

Well…

Wait.

Wasn't Kusakabe's family that had served Hibari's family for generations. They were… cousins or something.

I sat up, and immediately typed it in, hoping for something at least.

And yes!

I sat up in excitement as the family registries filed the Hibari family and the Kusakabe had had close ties until the Hibari family's disappearance. But… it didn't show much else. Nothing about shadiness nor nothing. It was just basically, Hibari was richer than Kusakabe since a hundred years ago or something, and therefore worked there, and were happy because both families had a mutual respect for each other.

Which made sense.

I mean, Kusakabe could get away with calling Hibari 'Kyo-san' in the future.

Nothing exciting.

I sighed, spun in my chair and left, hoping to catch a chocolate cookie or two and give some to Grey.

All there was left was tomorrow, I guess.

* * *

_His childhood room._

_How cute._

_Hibari narrowed his eyes at his surroundings. The rooms had rice-paper doors, but were heavily ornated with pictures of dragons, blocky patterns, and the garden outside was half concrete half bountiful garden that had order, yes, but to his eye that had appreciated the Japanese aesthetic, so unbearably heavy._

_No elegance._

_He sniffed, rubbing his nose gingerly to try and get the swelling down, before moving towards his wardrobe, sliding it open, and removing the bottom cupboard's left panel._

_Hibari smiled, painfully tugging a scab in the corner of his mouth._

_The photo was still there._

_Hibari sat down, photo in hand, surrounded by the harsh black and red decor of his room, the thin mattress on the bed to train his back providing little respite from the wooden frame._

_None of it mattered though, for the servants _still_ hadn't found his hidden photo._

_Inside the photo, Hibari was standing (smiling even, he had been sort of happy back then hadn't he) next to a woman who was gently stooped over. She was smiling, soft, and weak. Sick too, back then, though he hadn't known._

_She was Mother._

_And she had loved him._

_Hibari gently slid the picture back inside the hidden panel, slotted it back in and closed the wardrobe, breathing through his mouth because he reckoned his nose needed a few more hours._

_Then he glared at the walls outside._

_He hated this place. So… confining._

_He was no herbivore, needing help to escape. He calmly plumped his pillow on his bed, looking as if he was going to sleep. The red light in the corner blinked, as he got some more pillows from the wardrobe_

_With a one jump, he went from one side of the garden to the other, in the half a second the camera moved back towards the other direction. Scaled the walls, and landed in a quiet suburban street and started jogging off, going into an alleyway and starting to sprint._

_He wouldn't risk any taxis, nor transport._

_He would be caught if he didn't get out of the area– maximum five minutes before they realised he was gone._

_That should be enough._

* * *

The airport, was, as usual, not-crowded in the most crowded sense.

I mean, the airport was really spacey, so it _seemed_ like there weren't so many people but in fact there were.

I loved airports. They were so pretty, and they were usually exceedingly clean. On the other hand…

Planes were sucky.

No, really.

The recycled air, the ears popping… I frowned, even as Grey went ahead of me again to do something, leaving me with our one travel bag and the backpack I was wearing. The flight we were catching wasn't going to be private this time. I wanted to be more discreet, but Patrick booked First Class anyway, so the customs were going pretty fast.

Some tired looking economy class people were looking at the (non-existent) line for Business and First class in envy.

I shrugged and just walked through when Grey handed the passes.

After getting greeted by lots of sincere looking smiley faces, I flung myself into my seat, buckled the seatbelt under Grey's careful eye (then he sat in the seat behind me) and made it go as flat as possible.

It wasn't the worst place I've slept.

Before the plane started though, I texted Yamamoto.

I quickly tapped in my message.

: : yamamoto going to china call me tomorrow okay : :

: : WHY? XD : :

: : because remember kusakabe : :

: : OH RIGHT, I REMEMBER NOW. XD IS HIBARI IN CHINA? : :

: : i think so probably thats what my search indicates anyway: :

: : XD SO I'M YOUR SECURITY BLANKET? : :

: : yeah basically youre calmer than gokudera or tsuna so told you so they wont worry: :

: : OKAY! XD : :

Then the plane people started their safety demonstrations and made my seat straight again (sadly) before telling people to switch their phones off. Not particularly interested, I snapped my phone shut and tried to push out the plane noises so I could snatch some more sleep.

Just in case.

It pays to be paranoid.

* * *

A few hours later, I was in the Beijing airport going through customs.

"Yes, this is my face," I said, slightly annoyed at the frightened looking airport customs guy who was staring at my photo like I was a demonic devil or something. "These eyes are natural."

My rustic Chinese from I-pin was actually getting some use! I knew learning Chinese was a good skill to have. At least I was fluent, even if I couldn't read the newspaper for my life.

Or street signs.

…or maps.

Okay, so maybe I could only talk and listen, but that's better than a lot of people.

"Here you go, miss," he said, staring at my eyes. Still.

Maybe he was an evil Triad agent (okay, calling them the Triad was strange. I think I'll just call them Chinese Mafia, just to get my priorities sorted) and knew about the Brighteyes and wondered why I was coming here?

Nah, couldn't be.

Getting back my passport, I waited for Grey (who was behind me) and we went together to baggage claim.

"Gosh, people haven't been scared of my eyes for at least a year!" I huffed, waiting for the luggage to appear so we could go meet Patrick already.

Grey chuckled.

"Miss, they have all known you in Namimori quite awhile. Even if Namimori isn't the largest city, you're not as scary as you think you are."

My eyes tracked our luggage (bright yellow, to my eternal frustration. Grey apologetically said Anise had bought it just in case I had to go on a long overseas trip anywhere, damn it all) and hauled it off the line, dragging it towards the 'arrivals' gate. The whole place was high arching metal ceilings, with windows everywhere and an exceedingly clean (I could see my reflection) on some fake marble tiles.

It was extremely futuristic, actually. Much more developed than, for example, the Italian airport in this world.

Which made sense.

The Asian countries were much better off than the Western ones after the Eastern Western war. They even had time to clean up pollution and have some mountainous reserves because of their current economic stability.

So I dragged myself through the nice air-conditioned monochromic décor. There was glass everywhere. Even the shops. The air smelt like plastic, actually, and soon, the floor beneath us turned into some really thin carpet.

The handle of my (horrendously yellow) luggage was starting to dig into my fingers.

Beyond some frosted glass were the shadows of those people waiting for people arriving, so when we went out (Grey insisted on taking the backpack, so I took the luggage. Grey was old, no matter what he said, and this was heavier. And worse for the back, anyway), we stepped out and I _swear_ this woman just… materialised.

Like, from thin air.

It was so creepy!

One second I was staring at this ad for this soft drink thing (that child had really disturbing teeth) and the next, I was staring at this woman's collarbone as she coughed out softly, "Alice, I presume?"

I scowled _up_ at her.

"Yes."

She gave me a smile, entirely unaffected by my eyes in that way that old aunts smile down at you. Like 'oh, she's grumpy, look how adorable let me give you a noogie' type of smile.

And damn, that made me soften up to her. I haven't had that type of smile for ages.

I think this Asian lady saw that and relaxed, smiling a bit more genuinely.

Oh, she was good. I didn't even realise she was tense..

Grey smiled, his thick (impeccably styled) moustache and his twinkly old man eyes kind of beaming out happiness at the _tall_ neat, Chinese lady who looked around mid to late twenties.

"Yuan," he said in perfect Chinese (of course, I thought, my scowl going back up), "it's good to see you again."

Yuan smiled at him, red lips curving up as she went forward to give Grey a hug. She didn't seem to care if she got her creaseless grey pencil skirt or shirt crushed.

She got a few more points.

"Grey, don't be a stranger."

I finally banished my scowl to make a reasonable impression of an expressionless fish. "Grey, you know her?"

Grey chuckled.

"Miss, let me introduce you two." The lady turned to me, eyes twinkling eerily reminiscent of Grey. "This is my old student, Yuan Mei."

Yuan shook my head.

"I hope you haven't been inconveniencing Grey?" She said kindly, before her eyes hardened at my flinch, her grip getting a bit tighter. I pretended not to notice.

"Uh… well, I may have asked him to make a bit more hashbrowns and mango puddings at night than I should have? But Grey cooks so well, and I can't make toast for my life, and we share it anyway so it doesn't matter?" I rambled, and Yuan's eyes returned to kind, if not a little amused.

"What is it that I hear? Spoiling your underaged charge?" Yuan teased happily, turning to Grey.

Grey hefted his backpack a little self-consciously.

I never knew that the sixty something year old could look _bashful_. I mean, he was super-Grey!

"Well," his deep voice said, giving a little cough. "She grew on me, and it got a bit harder as things went by to refuse when she as working so hard. Of course," he amended at Yuan's raised eyebrow, "I still do my duties impeccably."

I stood a little straighter.

"Of course! Grey has never done anything wrong. In fact, he's a bit too perfect at his job. Even if I eat entirely too many hashbrowns, but that's my fault." I defended, before turned to Grey. "I'm sorry for my two secret hash brown caches, Grey."

Grey gave a heartfelt sigh.

"I thought I found one, but you have two?"

I suppressed a smile, and Yuan was looking at us _both_ fondly now, so mission accomplished.

"I think you'll get along with Patrick very well, Alice." She winked at me, before turning around to lead us to a car.

"He doesn't like tall people either."

My eyes widened, before grinning, which immediately crashed into a scowl.

"How did you know?"

She gave a little smile.

"You don't spend so much time at a guy who glares at any people taller than him by an inch to not recognise it in someone else," she said fluently… in Japanese.

I started forward, switching the (_horrid _yellow) suitcase to my left hand and trotted behind her, Grey following dutifully behind.

"You do know I can speak Chinese right?" I said in Chinese, albeit a little slower than everyone else. But then, I did that with Japanese too.

Yuan raised an impressed eyebrow, gave an enigmatic smile that really was quite pretty on her, and waved a hand in the air.

Immediately, there was this sleek black car that looked _entirely_ too shady. Yuan took my luggage, and Grey's backpack before waving us in.

"Please, Alice, Grey."

I slid in, and then blinked at the boy next to me.

He grinned.

"Hi Alice. Nice to meet you."

* * *

I was in China, being greeted by a Brighteye who had a penchant of talking people's ears off. Searching for Hibari who was kidnapped (and missing). The car spelt slightly of air freshener, some weird flowery vanilla scent I would expect from old grandmas that seemed to waft from… my cousin (I guess I should start thinking like that now).

Patrick was a fun, energetic guy, not what I expected when I was imagining the _respected_ and _feared_ Brighteye of China who Anise was in awe of. He looked eighteen years old, was a happy loud type of kid and was just… bubbly.

Yeah.

It was kind of strange. Not like Anise, who was just plain creepy and Rebornish in a way, nor like Alayne who was smart as a knife and had this bipolar thing with being a happy prankster and a mafia lady at the same time.

Patrick was… happy.

He wore a green shirt with a Hello Kitty logo on it, and he wore _shorts_. White shorts, and I think I remember that pair from a lady's store. His shoes were yellow.

Yeah, he was strange too, but I couldn't judge based off that.

Grey and Patrick hit it off right away, of course

China was very… dusty, even if they had focussed on environmental conservation for the past few years. It was all concrete spires, huge buildings, and lots and lots of traffic.

And crowds.

Tonnes and tonnes of crowds.

It's been a long time since my last literal 'crowd'. Idly wondering if that was why Hibari hated crowding so much, I listened to Grey and Patrick talk happily about stuff as we winded quite fast between a careening bus and some pedestrians.

I think I paled even further and stared out the window.

Yup.

Not gripping my seat really hard here.

And the other two just seemed unflappable, talking happily (Patrick) and calmly (Grey) about little stories they were trying to share with me.

"Yeah, Grey helped me out a lot, and have you tried his soufflé yet? It's to die for," he babbled happily to the car in general, and Grey gave the polite response.

"You flatter me, young master," he said with a small smile.

"Alice?" Patrick prodded, and I looked at the interior of the car. All black leather seats and sleek silver furnishings, Patrick kind of… stood out. He was really pale, although his shock of black hair and his _black eyes_ were detracted from it.

First thought after I saw him.

Patrick was _Eurasian._

No _wonder_ he could claim we were cousins. We were even kind of similar looking, with our pale skin.

"Yeah, I like his strawberry soufflé."

He pouted, quite childishly.

"No way! I love his kiwi one. Tell her that kiwi is so much better than strawberry," he turned to Grey, and the image of an eighteen year old boy wheedling to Grey about, well, fruit, made my laugh a bit.

Patrick turned to me, a grin on his face. His teeth flashed in the low light.

I was tempted to ask what brand of toothpaste he used. Bleach?

"And she laughs at last! I was thinking you were a robot."

I shook my head, my face twitching as I tried to retain the smile (and failing, so I let it go. No need for new comrades to think I was constipated).

"I like potatoes, actually. If you want to know."

"Well," Patrick shrugged, "you're Japan's representative. You know how everyone just kind of eats rice."

Heh.

Patrick just beamed again at my smile before the car pulled to a stop, and the door was opened for us. Yuan smiled through the opening.

"Young Master, we have arrived."

So we shuffled out, me banging my head when I left (Patrick didn't bother hiding his laughter, the bastard) and just looked at the moderately large… house.

It wasn't quite a mansion, but it was large.

I turned to Patrick. "Hey, I wanted to ask…" I paused at his calculating look. It was so unlike the bouncy guy in the car I immediately wondered if he had split personality syndrome. Like, maybe when he was inside he was happy, and outside he was cool, calm and collected?

After patting my hair, I faced him and asked with a sigh, "What is it?"

My resigned tone just made him brighter. Was it my face? My bed-head?

"You're…you're… SHORTER THAN ME! OH MY GOSH, LOOK YUAN! SHE'S SHORTER THAN ME!"

I scowled.

Yuan patted his head like he was an especially dumb puppy.

"Yes, young master. Please proceed to the sitting room where we can—"

Patrick ignored her and whirled towards me, picking up my hands and singing.

"We're going to be _best friends_, okay? I know we will! It will be the normal people against the Amazons that dominate this world!" He cackled. "We only have to hack off their feet, and they'll be improved! Don't you agree?"

He smiled rainbows and sunshine.

I deadpanned.

"No."

I think he was spitting unicorns by how his smile just widened.

He looked like that creepy Chinese girl in that ad in the airport. How did they show so many teeth?

"We're going to be such good friends! I hope I'm not creeping you out because I'm not the usual company you keep?" He smile slackened a bit.

I smirked, before forcibly stopping the twirling and marching towards the large house with his arm hostage.

"You'll fit right in."

Yeah.

I should shove him with Ryohei. They would be instant BFFs and do extreme things like toothpaste ads or something.

Patrick started skipping, urging me to skip with him. I scowled and tried to free my arm from his, but he wound it tighter, and I was left stumbling behind him cursing fluently at his unnatural bubbliness that he just laughed off.

Grey and Yuan just ignored us and were having a civilised talk.

The car drove off.

And so I was left to my doom.

Surprisingly fun doom, of course.

But it's doom, nonetheless.

* * *

Turns out I was shorter than him by… two and a half centimetres.

How he saw that, I don't know, but I suspect that those two (and a half) centimetres would be shorted to one if he unspiked his gelled hair.

But I wasn't here to poop on his party, so I just him celebrate before settling down in the sitting room and sliding a picture and the emblem of the Chinese underground family I was trying to hopefully rescue Hibari from.

And for the first time that day, Patrick's eyes grew serious.

He settled deeper down into his white couch, the leather squeaking as he leaned back. The fireplace behind him crackled, and he stared contemplatively out the large bay window to our left. There was a comfortable window seat settled there, with many squishy purple pillows and whatnot.

I was tempted to sit there, but settled on an interesting chair that hung from a frame on the ceiling instead, because they had blankets.

The smell of burnt sandalwood weaved through the air, and I tried swinging a little bit wondering if the chair would break off from the ceiling when Patrick turned his eyes back on me.

"Yes, you've come to the right place. I can help." He tapped the emblem on the table. "And if you're sure this is the Family that you want, then I think you want your captive out soon."

I swallowed.

"Why?"

He only smiled at me grimly, before shrugging.

"They're one of those families, you know. Those ones which climb their way up into power in two decades or so by inviting their enemies in and then letting them out one piece at a time. Like a kidney in another person, you know?"

I shook my head.

"I think… Hibari is important. Someone important in the family that he was trained, and let go for a few years."

Patrick pursed his lips.

"Then let's only hope that he's important enough to be alive by tomorrow."

* * *

_Hibari was right there, he had gone straight towards the mountains, and had gone about an hour into the forest near where they had kept him. He couldn't go into any large cities, but if he went through the forest and went straight towards the docks, sneak onto a ship. Maybe he can go to a place where he can catch a plane to recuperate in Japan._

_Shivering and ignoring how his nose was bleeding again, he slogged through the trees._

_He could smell the sea._

_The dirt path he was taking widened, until he saw his first house, and the forest seemed to fall away into urban sprawl._

_He tried to hold in a cough, as his feet pounded forward. The docks were there, he only had to sneak into a warehouse. He could escape._

_Brine mixed with sewerage and rubbish filled his nose as he crouched quietly next to the third warehouse in the yard. Glass shards were under his feet, but he didn't care much. _

_As long as he left._

_Slipping into the cold darkness, he tried to detect which container, which goods were being shipped out so he could be transported, if not safe, at least in one piece. The dark was cloying, suffocating, and the warehouse was humid and dank. _

_Hibari felt a increasing sense of alarm._

_For all that it seemed used outside, if was…_

_A knee to his stomach and another putting him into headlock later, something sweet was pressed into his nose._

_Darkness, and a few seconds of light from a lighter._

_The face he saw was expressionless and grave._

"_You shouldn't have escaped, Hibari."_

* * *

**Dear people,**

**Awesome reviewers and the readers that stuck to this chapter and endured the extraordinary crappiness of my last one.**

**UNI IS TOMORROW**

**I AM NERVOUS**

**So I typed this chapter because man, I hope I have lots of time to give you guys chaps. I've been having lots of fun planning my next project (and finishing this one) and I kind of wish I gave Patrick more spirit, but it'll show later on. I hope. Hibari is in bad shape here, but he's Hibari so he'll live.**

**XD **

**I hope you review and have fun and good luck with EVERYONE's exams and life. Remember, there is always a better side to bad situations! XD I love all of you! Hoping you aren't all too angry at me for being late, as per usual? **


	69. Hibari Rescue!

_Wend,_

_I'm not going to be able to send you letters for a while, so I'm telling you now so you don't get too lonely. I won't forget you were dodging my questions about how the Brighteye were treating you! Anise, you better be nice, even if he's kind of off his coo coo and a bit snarky and mean. I mean, imagine if you were alive for hundreds of years! _

_Anyway, I'm going to China to track down the Huang Mei Lei Family there. I think they're dangerous? I hope not._

_Hoping you will reply soon,_

_Your friend_

_Alice_

* * *

The symbol I had scrounged up was a golden lotus flower, simply drawn in circles and pointed ovals as if you were looking down on it. There were no other colours, just gold on black, and I personally thought it had been quite pretty. I had found an image of Hibari Kokoa's wedding dress, and the symbol had been quite clear on the back. No other images of her had any relation to the clan she had married into, and there were no photos after that. It was as if she had stopped existing after getting married.

Patrick stared down at the symbol, his brow furrowed while his hands lay curled still on his lap. I hugged the blankets on the hanging chair closer, struggling to get it all wrapped around me quickly so that it would be easier to wrap around myself. It was still early spring, and it was a little cold. And we were both fellow Brighteyes, so I didn't have to be scared of any foreign germs that would prey against my poor immune system. The blankets were nice, warm, and white, made of really soft cotton. Popping my head out from the top of my cocoon, I noted with surprised that Patrick had barely moved.

I let him think as my eyes wandered.

It really was a nice not-quite-a-mansion. The sitting room wasn't so big as to be too roomy, just spacious feeling, and there was a soft white décor to everything. Most of the whites I've encountered in rooms had been mostly harsh, like the hospital or Hibari's house, so all these soft lines and gentle shadows on a (not quite so harsh) white was surprisingly comfortable.

Especially the spots of colour here and there. The purple pillows at the window seat, for instance, or the splash of blues on the mantelpiece. Outside were some trees, and since it was late afternoon, it streamed through them to make all sorts of shadows on the white carpet. It was a really calming room, rich but not ostentatious like my own hotel.

I wondered if I would have gotten something like this if I didn't vehemently deny buying a mansion for myself. For the first time in my whole second life, I thought that it might have been quite nice. No people hounding you for jobs, no snooty receptionists or elevators.

Just a long driveway and a car, maybe a live in housekeeper who would be a nice old lady who could cook a wicked apple pie with Grey and me. Decorating whichever way I wanted, without any weird antique vases scattered everywhere.

My chair was gently swaying, and I let the calm just kind of… wash over me. Patrick was still silent, but I could hear some people (Yuan? Grey?) down the hall through the open door, laughing and chatting away. A clink of kitchen utensils. Maybe they were going to start cooking dinner soon.

Patrick stood out like a blotch of colour on the white couch, as the whole room was like sifting through gentle monochromes. He had colouring like mine, only harsher. Instead of grey hair, he had black. We both had exceedingly white skin, and our eyes were… well. His were black. His looks made it dramatic, but like everyone else I had met in the Brighteye family, I wondered what his eye colour was.

Had it been grey, like mine? Or brown, or blue, or green?

What was your first life like, that you work so hard in this one now?

But you see, questions like that were hard to ask. Everyone knew everyone else had lost their entire world, literally, in one day. Who would be still sensitive to what? How do I know what I'm asking would be a trigger?

You see, all us Brighteyes were head-cases in a sense. I and no-one else begrudged anyone else of any strange habits to cope.

When I had been training at home base, when I was around… ten? I had been living there for two years, living and getting up day to day in that horribly big, luxurious room. There had been the first few months, where I kept waking up hoping to see my mermaid curtains, and Jack throwing things out of his closet in frustration and accidentally tripping on them later. Dreams of seeing Emily grow up into a teen, and being an awesome older sister to go to. Then I slowly got used to the fact that yes.

I couldn't go back anymore.

I could never go back anymore.

My fingers curled in the soft cotton, rearranging a cushion so that I could lean backwards a bit more comfortably, and closed my eyes.

There was a time that every time I closed my eyes, the memories would come and swirl through like some tempting piece of chocolate that kept dancing out of your reach. The grass was greener on the other side, after all. And oh, was it greener. No matter how busy I got, nothing changed. Then I met everybody.

The mentality I had in the Italian mansion wasn't the best, now that I reminisced. I thought everyone but my fellow Brighteyes fictional. That mentality would of course break when I met Tsuna, but in those years between when I was eight and thirteen, apart from any training I had with my teachers, I would go wander the mansion.

It was a nice mansion. There were only a few Brighteyes posted in any place, but some would return occasionally for their next mission, or as a break. We rarely got to talk, but they were all nice, and kind. Once I asked a seemingly innocent question.

Something on the lines of… hm. On the lines of, 'do you like cats? My neighbour once had a really grumpy one named Talon,' and she, she looked around sixteen then, started crying. Apparently, she had known a cat named Talon, only in her world, cats were kind of like an eternal companion that shadowed you. Hers was Talon, and he would have died with her, but she couldn't feel him at all.

I knelt on the bench and gave her a hug, and realised it never got better. A loss was a loss. You can't go and make yourself lose less of something. It was like someone close to you dying – you've lost something. And you can't get it back.

Then I asked Liza, the next day when I realised loss wasn't something you could plug up and keep walking with. The heart, all our hearts had holes now. Huge, gaping holes that seemed to bleed themselves out.

She smiled at me, and helped me hop onto her desk, where she didn't care if I sat on important documents or not. They were security plans, I think. She had been a security consultant before.

"Alice, your heart isn't something that is still all the time. Every time you experience something new, something you like, it grows a little. The holes never go away, the loss never becomes less, but if you let yourself grow, love more, feel more, your heart would grow bigger, and the holes would be comparatively smaller. And one day, you'll realise that your heart is large enough to sustain those holes, that bleed and bleed and bleed, because you love, and people love you back." She smiled at me, her hands wrapped around my childishly small ones. It was summer, in Italy. All sticky, and humid and hot. But Liza's smile had the cold, bitter feeling of loneliness, and I wondered if hearts could shrink so that the hole would seem bigger and bigger until there was no heart left.

"But I can't remember how to love, Liza." I said, my voice so high and unfamiliar to my ears. "I can't even remember how to smile."

Because I had smiled more, once, when I had a pretty red-headed friend who laughed and tugged and loved me because of who I was.

"You don't have to force yourself now," Liza just smiled instead, tugging me into her arms where she held me up with a slight _oof_. "You're getting heavy. No, that conversation topic was heavy. Let's go get something to eat, shall we?"

For the first time, I tried to smile at her. It didn't work. So I deadpanned instead. She didn't notice.

That was the day though, where I finally found someone I could talk to. All my teachers were too distant, too cold, sad, and violently happy. Liza was a person who understood. I was eleven, then? And I found it was harder than ever before to talk to people conversationally.

But that, that was my story.

What was Patrick's? Liza's? Belle's?

There was a rap on the door, and I was startled awake. Looking blearily at the doorway, Yuan was standing there looking fondly at us both. When did I start dozing? Patrick had tilted his head towards the door, in his hands were sheafs of paper that weren't there before.

Oops.

I rubbed my eyes and didn't try to sit up.

"I'm sorry, Patrick," I said in English, "I should have helped."

Patrick smiled, before shaking his head.

"No, you needed it." I blinked in surprise.

Perfect English. I looked at him in surprise, as even Grey had an Italian accent in English. It wasn't as popular as some other languages in this world, as only parts of Europe and Canada spoke it, and maybe a fifth of America.

"American?" I queried, awake enough to try not trip over as I struggled out of the ridiculously comfortable blanket pile. The pillows weren't helping.

"No," he shook his head. "Half Chinese, a quarter Canadian and a quarter Australian." He didn't really need to ask where I had come from – my accent had already given it away. "Grew up in my equivalent of China."

I nodded. "I didn't travel much until I came here."

He gave me a quirked grin, and I finally noticed that he had switched on the lamp next to his couch, and past the white curtains the sky was a dark blue. And I smelt something really yummy – smelt like steamed fish and something else spicy.

I grinned at Yuan, who was still standing there with a little smile on her face.

"Dinner?" I asked, already perking up at the prospect. Not that airline lunches were _bad_, per se, but nothing beats freshly cooked food. _Nothing_.

"Yes," she nodded, and I hopped out of the chair immediately, not caring if I stumbled or not. Patrick watched with a chuckle, as he stood up himself and stretched.

"Ugh, my back," he groaned.

Yuan just gave him a Look. One of those, 'I've told you so many times to mind your posture' type of look. And I knew, because Grey gave me those at least once a day. Yuan turned around, and I shared a sympathetic nod in Patrick's direction. He pulled a silly face, and we shared a small smile as he bounded before me yelling something ridiculous. Race? Pfft. I would so win.

In the end, no one won because Yuan technically beat us both by first flattening Patrick's spiked hair (which sent him into one big wailing pile of _NOOOOOOOO_) and me by making me trip over him with a sharp reprimand of 'no running in the hallway'.

Grey watched us at the end of the corridor with a fond smile on his face, a tacky plastic apron wrapped around his torso as he continued ladling soup into bowls.

It was surprisingly domestic.

* * *

After a dinner that was _extremely_ Chinese (no other way to describe it. Whole steamed fish with soy sauce and shallots? Hello? There were other dishes, of course, but really), I munched on some leftover chicken, following Patrick as he went back to the sitting room. I had no complaints – the kitchen was still kind of dirty, and Grey wouldn't let me wash the dishes. The dining room was really nice, all warm woods and all that, but Yuan was there cleaning. There were still a few more rooms beyond that, but Patrick's papers were all in the room we were in before, so I just trailed after him, thinking happily about the steamed potatoes Grey cooked up for me.

Patrick shot me a wide grin, and his teeth gleamed as brightly as ever, even after a meal. I swear my teeth could never do that.

"You like the dinner?" he asked, and I nodded with great satisfaction. He smiled again, less bright and more heartfelt, and replied with a "Good," and went back to sitting on his white sofa. I sat in my abandoned cocoon again, the chair swaying back and forth a little before getting settled. Patrick waited patiently for me, his hands organising his papers.

He pulled up the sleeves to his green Hello Kitty shirt, and looked at me.

"I think I have a lead on your friend," he said. "Huang Mei Lei had been established for quite a long time. However, it hadn't been a major family until around twenty two years ago."

I nodded, knowing this much.

"The person who made their family rise was the father of the current head, who is Lei Zhang Wei. The current head had been no less merciful, and continued rising to the top. He had a wife, formerly Hibari Kokoa, and apparently had a son called Lei Wang Jie. This son ran away a few years ago."

…Wait a second.

"The current head is nearing his forties, an age nearing retirement in this kind of world, and he wants his heir to come back to train. I heard he sent a few parties out to find him, and recently brought him back."

No way.

"Lei Wang Jie hates the family head and all it stands for. He ran away to his other ancestral home and created another identity for himself. He replies to no other name, because apparently he is particularly stubborn."

I cut in.

"Hibari Kyoya."

Patrick remained silent, letting me process my thoughts a little before looking down at his papers.

"He was captured by force, and has reportedly nearly escaped by himself already. Now he is held with maximum security." Patrick gave me a grin. "You said something about rescuing him?"

I gave a huff of mild amusement myself.

Oh goodness. This was going to be hard. I wonder if I should've asked for Tsuna's help after all.

"At least we know his organs aren't going to be lurking in someone else's body," I offered.

Patrick gave a snort of laughter.

"True." He shuffled the papers again, the frown on his face quite contrasting his attitude this early afternoon, obviously in deep thought. We sat in silence again, and this time I managed to stay awake. I didn't dare to try and look for myself what he was looking at though, because he kept shuffling them around like the order was really important, and I knew the feeling of someone messing up something when you were trying to organise (Lambo, the idiot).

I was feeling ridiculously comfortable with this guy who I've met for a total of five hours.

"Hey Patrick," I piped up after ten minutes or so, "were you being so happy earlier because you wanted me to relax or something?" I shrugged. "It's usually hard for me to interact with new people, but I relaxed around you within an hour."

He gave me a surprised eyebrow, perhaps wondering where that sudden train of thought came from before returning my shrug.

"I usually do put on an act, but that's tiring all the time," he replied with a heavy sigh, running a hand through his flattened spikes. "Even if I'm good at talking to people and making them agree with what I say, sometimes you have to be… dishonest about it. I tried to avoid that with you and be myself for once," he waved a hand towards his weird clothes. "This was how I usually dressed Before."

I just frowned to myself. "Why not act?"

"Because I was going to be surrounded by people I cared about, and I wanted my new family member to like me as I was," he said patiently. "You saw one of worse sides of me and still like me the same. That counts for much more than you think for me."

Sides?

I said as much.

He gave a little laugh again. I didn't really mind, because as Anise said, Patrick was _The Master_ at diplomatic stuff. It would be logical to try and understand more of the work when I was so inept at it. I was just… so surprised.

I was able to fall asleep with him in the room.

Even I had to have two weeks at Namimori before I relaxed enough to doze at my desk. If that was Patrick's own special skill, I could kind of understand why Anise revered him so much.

"As a diplomat, you've got to match the people you're talking to in the most natural way possible," Patrick said instead. "Some people need me to be intimidating, some need me to look stupid and foolish. Some won't talk until I seem drunk, and some are just plain evil and you have to be evil back. It's nice to talk to honest people, sometimes."

"So what's your opinion of me?" I asked out of pure curiosity, and a tiny bit of boredom.

"Blunt, horrible at lying, loyal but indecisive, chronic worrier, and very afraid of rejection. By your interactions with me you probably had siblings or very close friends, and you probably stand by your decisions absolutely after you get over your indecisiveness. Pacifist. Careful, but not much of a strategist." Patrick gave me a smile and a smirk. "I could go on. You're very easy to read, Alice."

I blinked.

"Oh. Is that a good thing?"

Patrick only gave another laugh, before standing up and beckoning me to join him. I gave up on fighting the blankets to just plop onto the floor, blankets and all, to untangle myself there.

"Yes, it is. You are an exemplary example of the type of person I like to help. When you face masks every day its quite refreshing to find someone who doesn't bother much with those. And you're short. It's us shorties against the world, you know?"

Then he eyed me speculatively.

"You're getting bored, aren't you?"

"Yeah." Was it that obvious?

"Well," he mused when I finally followed him out into the hallway and went upstairs. I stared about in curiosity, and was pleasantly surprised to see the second storey of the house had a light blue colour scheme instead of white. "You could be doing more productive things than staring at me try to organise some sort of plan. We'll approach it together early next morning, and head out as soon as possible."

He opened a door, and inside was a really cosy room that was approximately the size of my hotel bedroom in Japan. There was a computer there, and that was where Patrick made me sit. "Try to be sneaky about it, but can you try and track the financial going ons around Huang Mei Lei family?" He scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I know all about the grudgefests, but the economic side I'm kind of lost."

I shrugged.

"Sure," I said and sat down, perfectly prepared to do that for as long as I could. I was certainly comfortable enough here.

"This is your room, the bathroom is down the hall and can I verify that you have no other allies that would know your hostage who could help?"

I peered up at the ceiling in thought.

"No… Wait!" I sat up straight. "Fon!"

The Storm Arcobaleno had directly stated he knew Hibari _before he came to Namimori_. "Fon, the former Arcobaleno. He can help. He owes my family in Japan a lot, so even if he didn't want to, he would come anyway. Contact Fon!"

Patrick raised an eyebrow, mouthing '_Fon_' in surprise.

"Have powerful friends?"

I gave him a bemused look, before turning back to the computer, which had already been booted, surprisingly, so there wasn't any password required.

"You don't even know."

Patrick gave 'hm' of amusement but let that go, padding down the corridor and the stairs again while I logged into the Brighteye network.

Time to get cracking, eh?

* * *

I woke up earlier than I planned, when I had just not bothered with changing into pajamas and just stripped and crashed into the bed. It wasn't as if the sheets were new and stiff (quite the opposite, with just the smell of the clothes dryer so they were, at least, new). I'd emailed all the stuff I had found to Patrick, surprised at how much I had found.

It was around half an hour later (when the sky still wasn't even light yet) when Patrick bounced into my room.

"Alice~!" He sang, banging the door open. "Wake up! Wait a second, why are you already up?" He gave a disappointed pout. "Grey promised me you were a heavy sleeper!"

I shrugged, and tried not to smirk at his disappointed face. He looked more like a thirteen year old when he did that, considering his height.

"Jet lag?"

He narrowed his eyes at me.

"I just think you want to ruin my fun." He pointed at me dramatically before flinging himself out of the room crying, "_Yuan_! I need a hug!"

Gosh, I thought as I swung my feet off the bed. If he had _actually_ woke me up like that, I would have hated his guts. But since he hadn't, I could enjoy his put upon expression during a really early breakfast. I was nearly out the door, drawn towards the lovely smell of fluffy pancakes when my phone rang.

Shuffling over to answer it, I was surprised to see… Yamamoto?

"Yamamoto?" I asked, not bothered to hide my surprise.

"_Hey, Alice! You told me to call you today, remember? I've already explained that you have gone to China with Hibari to Tsuna and Gokudera! Tsuna then told Kusakabe, but then he looked really worried and rushed off with the rest of the Namimori Disciplinary Club. Are you sure you're just going on holiday?" _Yamamoto's cheerful voice rang out. I walked down the stairs.

"When did I say I was ever going on holiday, Yamamoto? Other than the fact that school is still going on, and Hibari would never actually skip school with no reason, right?"

"_Oh, I was just wishing you were doing something just for fun, for once! You and Hibari get on better than a lot of us put together, so I guess I was just wishing… Is it something dangerous?" _The vague sweeping sounds I could hear in the background stopped.

"Well, it could be, I guess. I'm with my cousin right now to try and do this diplomatically."

"_Your cousin? That's awesome, Alice! You haven't seen your family for a long time, right? But why all the diplomatic stuff?" _The sounds of sweeping started again, and I thought I heard his father singing in the background. I kind of missed Namimori, at this point. Normally, I would have just swung by and gotten some free sushi off them, but they were kind of faraway right now.

"Hibari got kidnapped by his father to become the next mafia mogul, which he doesn't want to be. We're trying to get him out, or at least get him out enough so that we can talk on our terms and not theirs, but it's going to be hard. They have no reason at all to give Hibari back, actually, except our claim on him as Vongola Family candidate. And even that is really weak."

I heard Yamamoto ponder this through the phone, as I slowly meandered down towards the kitchen. Grey gave me an old man smile and pointed to a small stack of pancakes with honey and syrup right next to them. I flashed him a thumbs up, settling down and immediately pouring half a bottle over them.

"_Do you need us to come over?" _Yamamoto finally asked, and I thought about that for about a second before looking at Patrick.

"Hey, Patrick. Would you need the Vongola Tenth Generation and backup to come over for support?" I asked. "That's the family I'm affiliated to, if you wanted to know, and they," I wagged my phone around here, "want to know if they need to help."

Patrick raised an eyebrow, before thinking, sucking on a spoon.

"Uh… maybe. It would be good backup. Give me their number later, so if we do need them Yuan can contact them. The Vongola don't have lots of influence here compared to other places, but it's still quite a lot."

I nodded and returned to Yamamoto.

"You hear that, Yamamoto?"

He laughed.

"_Yeah, was that your cousin? I don't mind if you gave your cousin my number, since family of Alice's must be trustworthy, right? Anyway, I guess I'll be hoping you guys don't call us then, because if you do something's wrong, haha. It's nice to hear from you, though! Gokudera keeps complaining that you're drifting away, lately."_

"What," I deadpanned.

"_I can totally see your eyebrow raising! That's cool!"_

"Uh, Yamamoto, that wasn't the point. What drifting away?"

"_Well," _he said obliviously, "_he misses you, you know? He loves arguing with people, but he keeps saying no one has guts. Like, I just laugh because he's funny, and Ryohei only argues when he wants people to join his boxing club! Tsuna's really pacifistic, so I think he just wants to yell at somebody."_

I shrugged. "Sure. Wouldn't want group bonds to fall now. Tell him to call me whenever he wants to after I come back from China."

"_Why not now?"_

"Serious, hazardous, rescue operation?" I reminded.

"_Oh, right! I'll definitely tell Gokudera later then. See you!"_

"Yeah, you too."

The dial tone came back on around the time all the syrup soaked through my pancakes. I ate pancakes as I shoved the phone towards Patrick.

"Here, Yamamoto's phone number." Patrick noted it down on a piece of tissue and eyeliner. I politely refrained from asking why he needed eyeliner for. "He's the Rain Guardian, and he's a pretty strong fighter. Of course, the strongest right now in our little group should be Hibari or Tsuna, the Vongola Tenth. Then it should be Yamamoto, Mukuro, our mist Guardian, then Gokudera, our Storm Guardian. Our Sun Guardian, Ryohei, has battle capabilities and is really awesome at fighting but he can heal so we mostly make him stay back. I do recon, so I don't really fight." I shrugged. "We work the best together though, just saying. We're used to fighting together. We've been through a lot."

Patrick 'hmm'ed.

"Your mission was the next Vongola Generation. If I wanted to pull weight, who would you count as allies that could pull our asses back from Huang Mei Lei's clutches? Any allies?"

Well…

"Count the Giglio Nero, the Arcobaleno, Rokudo Mukuro and his gang, Vongola, probably VARIA? I'm not sure about the last one. Shimon is a small group, but has pretty good fighters."

"That's a pretty good arsenal, especially the Arcobaleno. Some of those groups are pretty obscure, or have their power base in Europe. The Arcobaleno are worldwide. This reminds me, Alice!"

Wait. I have learnt enough about the Katekyo world that any person who gives that type of shit eating grin does not mean well for me.

"What?" I fidgeted warily, shoving another mouthful of syrupy pancake into my mouth (Grey tutted about my table manners, and I made a show of chewing as delicately as I could with such a large mouthful of crap).

"Fon gave his suggestion to how we should take your comrade out of his prison!"

That shit eating grin has not died yet.

Warning mode: DANGER ALERT

…Ignoring the flashing red lights in my head that yelled '_CAUTION! CAUTION!' _I idiotically ignored my survival instincts.

"What was his idea?"

Patrick gave a _big_ show of drinking a sip of tea (and then he burnt his tongue, and I gave a smug smirk which he shot back with twice as much smugness which made my alarm bells ringing again) and putting down his cup.

"Ahem. Alice!" He pronounced pompously, sticking his nose into the air. "We both agreed that the best plan is for you to get thrown into the dungeon with comrade Hibari!"

…

What.

"You're serious," I deadpanned.

"Yup." Patrick nodded solemnly.

"How is that even logical."

"I'll explain after breakfast. Your reaction was less dramatic than I expected. I expected at least some dramatic eye blinking, or dropped forks. You deal with shock way too well, Alice!"

I just gave my best stoned stare through my thorough chewing of some truly delicious pancakes (I love that moment when there's so much syrup in the pancake that it kind of disintegrates in your mouth into sugary, floury mess. Hana had once told me that that was totally disgusting, and I should never eat that much sugar at once. Kyoko and I just reasoned she was missing out on a major joy in life) while Patrick was mixing chocolate, pepper and salt together on a plate. "I've done crazier crap. It's fine. My plot was kind of written like a superhero action comic for boys. Believe me, when I say our group has done some crazy crap."

Patrick smiled, eating his lightly salted and peppery pancake with chocolate syrup into his mouth and miraculously not grimacing or dying.

I'll stick to honey and syrup, thanks.

"I was sent here when I was nine because I had started on some diplomatic training in my old world. I was around… twenty seven when I died? Anyway, my plot starts when my main character is nineteen, and he's supposed to rock some serious political boats in China, and he doesn't react easily to people who haven't lived here for a long time. So since I didn't need much training, we reasoned the earlier the better. Living here for ten years is good enough, right?"

I nodded.

"Mine started a few years ago, and finished just two weeks before."

His eyes widened.

"Finished?"

I nodded. "My story had some time travel thrown in, so I have to make sure Hibari gets out of here and not become a Chinese mogul, that's all. You wouldn't _believe_ the stress a mission gives you!" I stressed, stabbing a fork into my third pancake. "Enjoy the sleep now, because after you meet the guy you have to protect or whatever and become their friend, it gets ten times as hard."

"I figured that I didn't have to worry about anything after the mission."

I snorted. "Just a special case. Does your story have time travel thrown in?"

Patrick smiled. "No, but it does have a lot about secret government agencies with secret biological experiments with super powers." At my surprised look, he nodded. "What can I say? I loved those conspiracies with heroes and stuff thrown in. Want to read? I have my sack somewhere upstairs. It was a quintet."

Cutting up my last pancake, and listening to the rustle in the kitchens behind me as Yuan and Grey had their own conversation, I let my bare feet kick the table legs a bit. "I would love to, afterwards maybe. No wonder your mission doesn't trust people easily. How are you even going to get close to them?"

He was smiling by now.

"I am a total genius, that's how!" At my blank face, he gave a excited smile. "No, really! My character is this awesome guy who can use force fields, and his main love interest is the main scientist's assistant who is secretly really nice to him, yeah? By chance, he meets another member who was scientifically changed as well. They have a mysterious benefactor who helps them escape, and they then disguise themselves as normal humans. In a course of nine years, they create a major political party that creates a better country on the whole! _Alice_, are you listening to me?"

I bobbed my head. "Yeah. That sounds interesting."

He gave me a mock glare.

"You aren't listening!"

"I was!" I protested.

"No you weren't. Tell me the main character's name!"

I scrambled for a moment before narrowing my eyes. "You didn't mention it, idiot. And you haven't explained how you are a total genius."

Patrick shrugged. "Their mysterious benefactor in this world becomes their fifth power chain and close confidante, because he helps them integrate into society and gives them all the resources to do what they have to do. But that's also another reason why I had to come in early. Someone had severely maimed the guy who was supposed to be the mysterious benefactor, and that wasn't supposed to happen. He's the main guy's twin, see."

I resisted the urge to say I _don't_ see, but he had already continued talking.

"So I reached out to him when we were both about eleven? We became friends, he found out about my status as one of the elite Brighteyes who were also known for being good people stickybeaks. The Estraneo incident and our role in it helped me a lot. You wouldn't even know how much. And so, we reached to the main character together, and we've been in constant contact for five years or so. He's nearly ready to burst out and meet us now, and I'm so excited!"

And he did look excited, because even though his story telling skills were a bit lacking, his utter enthusiasm for his mission was kind of adorable to see. I had never been as excited at meeting Tsuna.

Apprehensive, maybe. But not as utterly happy as this guy.

Seeing Patrick's happy grin as he continued babbling at how they were going to take the world by the storm, I just nodded and smiled and thought that this trip was much better than I expected.

* * *

_Hibari was in a room much colder and much less comfortable than his childhood room. There was a window, up high from the ground, with bars placed horizontally every five centimetres apart. There, Hibari could hear the street, the feet and the smell of the street._

_He was underground then. The first basement level, he supposed. Probably high security. He had never come to this part of the compound before, so he wouldn't know. There was a thick blanket, and a mattress. The table was bolted down, as well as the chair, and the door had clear slats going through them. The toilet in the other room was dripping, but when he went to investigate, there was nothing but toilet paper._

_He went back into the main room and sat, feeling caged and claustrophobic._

_He wanted out._

_He wanted out, _now_._

_A speaker crackled to life._

"_Having fun, Hibari?" He snarled back, his eyes immediately identifying the camera and the speaker in the high corner. Too high to reach – the ceiling was at least four metres tall. "You realise that you are going to stay here until you agree to my terms? But I won't starve you or mistreat you. I believe you'll come to me on your own. Here's your meal. Eat well."_

_The guard didn't even open the door. There was a slat in the doorway where metal slid up, and a tray was pushed through. _

_Hibari took a few bites of the food, drank all the water, and immediately threw the fork at the camera in the corner and smiled in vindication when the fork smashed both the speaker and the camera._

_He calmly continued to eat, as not even a minute later there were steps in the corridor, and seven men were there hauling him out of the first room and into a second, exactly the same, with a functional camera._

_Heh._

_Herbivores._

_He hid his clenched hands, as he lounged on the mattress with absolute nonchalance. The air was too still. _

_He felt like he couldn't breathe again._

* * *

No, I take that back.

This trip was horrible.

What type of crap plan was that?

"We have plans about where Hibari would be kept after his planned escape, and I have around twenty-six agents in the Huang Mei Lei, but there's only one that's high-ranking enough to do anything. The others are info gatherers," Patrick continued blathering, his black eyes wandering around the map of the place he had spread before me. "So I arrange a diplomatic visit, you sneak around being sneaky and get caught. They're going to suspect me, and I'll just say you're not one of my spies."

"Why?" I asked, trying to swallow my utter confusion at what he was trying to do.

"They won't believe me, of course. I'll be utterly oily and unpleasant so they'll suspect me and Brighteyes are known for their good treatment of their spies. So they would probably throw you into a high security prison so I can't attempt to get you back easily. That," he tapped the map somewhere around the middle, "would be close to where Hibari is. I'll tell my high-ranking agent to arrange that you two are in the same room together."

Then he outlined the rest of his plan, and I finally understood.

At the end, Patrick was looking at me with some trepidation, his hand twisting a Hello Kitty wristwatch around and around his wrist.

I nodded, and stared straight into his eyes.

"I haven't met you long, Patrick, but I trust you. I'll do this."

He gave me an exuberant smile.

"And I promise I won't disappoint you. I am a genius, after all."

We shared a fist bump. The pact was sealed.

* * *

We arranged a visit in the early afternoon that very day, and I hashed out my memory, organised the bits I had to remember first, the plans that were later, and the code-names for each of the Brighteyes that were inside the Family.

We pulled up outside the door, and we paused in front of them for awhile. Grey had stayed back, his appearance much too Western to take off (well, Patrick and I gang-pressed him into not going because we were both worried about his age), so Yuan was the only one going inside with us. The driver was going to stay there, outside, and was apparently a loyal hitman himself so we needn't worry about him.

They had dyed my hair black for the occasion, a natural looking very dark brown. My eyebrows were dyed too, but nothing could be done for my eyelashes except some mascara, apparently. My eyes had black contacts in them, intense stuff, and Grey had pulled some magic skills out of his nose because he somehow _also_ knew how to put on makeup.

Yuan and Patrick did too. I was the only one who was wondering the difference between eyeliner and eye pencils and eyebrow powder and whatnot. After some really light stuff that messed with shadows or something, me and Patrick looked very similar. Like real family.

Part one done.

Two.

"You remember what you need to do, right?"

I nodded.

Patrick had slicked back his hair with really greasy oil, and looked as much as a sleazy business man as he could ever be. He even had a slick leather suitcase.

I closed my eyes and pulled on a thread of Grey Flame, not knowing how much I had left, but knowing I needed it more than ever. Covering myself in the most thin layer possible, I turned invisible and patted Patrick's arm.

Yuan opened the door from the outside, and the moment Patrick left the car there was a smarmy grin on his face, his entire posture full of arrogance and confidence. He took a moment standing outside the car slicking back his hair so that Yuan couldn't physically shut the door lest she clip him. This careful position gave me exactly three seconds to get out.

I did, and carefully tapped his shoulder when I did so he knew I was out.

The Huang Mei Lei's estate loomed over us, Yuan expressionless and the dutiful assistant, Patrick the opportunity grabber, and me, the invisible spy destined to get caught. It was a large door, large, wooden with curly arches of red painted wood curled and intricate to allow for terracotta tiles stacked delicately on top.

Patrick didn't even hesitate to ring the doorbell, the intercom spluttering to life as he said stuff into it. He was already completely in character. Yuan stood silently next to him, face the most stony mask I had ever seen. They obviously had no problems doing this, even though it wasn't even for their own sake.

I needed to gather myself though, so I took a huge breath in and out to find the little ball of courage deep, deep, _deeeeeeep_ in my chest to try and bring it out when I needed it most.

* * *

I immediately veered towards the left when the doors opened, the camera swivelling to watch Yuan and Patrick go by. There were gardens here, and in about a ten minute walk or so, there would be the dog patrols. I only had to wait there, and get caught.

The gardens were absolutely beautiful, by the way.

Yeah. There was definitely a part of my brain that noted the absolute beauty of these flowers. There was a garden path actually, that led straight towards a room… which was unlocked.

Curious. I peered inside, and saw quite an elegant room, actually. The desk was right next to the door, and on it was a few books, quite dusty, and one that had blown open, with a letter half falling out.

_Very_ curious and not running out of time (Patrick asked for at least half and hour to forty five minutes before getting caught), I slipped inside, figuring it was as good a place to hide as any. On the other side was another door, leading into the main portion of the house.

The letter was yellowed with age, and all I saw was _ya_, in Japanese.

Curious.

Glancing around, I carefully inched the letter out from the book.

_To my… ya_

Still in Japanese. The book (about Japanese geography and volcanos) covered the middle part though. Scowling, I pulled the letter from under it, the dust puffing up and the book giving a little thump as it hit the desk.

I didn't much care though.

Because in beautiful, curly writing was this:

_To my darling, beloved Kyoya._

There was only one Kyoya I knew that was in anyway affiliated to this place. Why wasn't this letter with him? I looked around this room now, curious about this dude with pretty handwriting.

Strong afternoon sun streamed through the unlocked doorway behind me, lighting up a slightly dusty and unused room. It was clear that no-one had bothered cleaning this place was awhile, as there was dust everywhere. But it was cosy. Little cushions, a small table very reminiscent of Japan. The place had been colourful, once. There was a withering bonsai on the corner of the desk.

Well.

I slipped a bit of Flame over the envelope and tucked it into a secret pocket, and stepped back into pollen heaven.

* * *

Exactly forty two minutes after we had entered the estate, I was shoved roughly onto the floor in front of this really scary guy that was, with no doubt at all, Hibari's father. They had the same eyes, the same cheekbones, and the same hair. Only the nose wasn't the same – this guy's nose was slightly snubbed while Hibari had one that was very… regal looking. Yeah, an aristocratic type of nose.

He was also old, and very cold-looking. Hibari was also aloof, but he did have emotion. Zhang seemed to be entirely made of marble.

"And who is this?" Hibari's dad drawled. Lei Zhang Wei?

I'll just call him Zhang in my head.

Zhang was looking at us all imperiously, his face impassive except for a sadistic smirk. I was surprised I was even registering it as a sadistic smirk – after the Varia, anyone's smirks seemed tame (Belphegor especially had this mastered). With a fresh bruise on my face, I looked the exact part of victim.

Awesome.

I discreetly worked my jaw while trying to be discreet.

"Found this person lurking around the west gardens, sir," the guy who caught me said.

"Good job. Always know I can depend on my second in command," the guy said. He was sitting on this really big wooden chair that looked in no way comfortable, reminiscent of those Chinese period dramas with those evil guys that liked looking down their nose at the simple peasants begging for money.

Which was, funnily enough, where Patrick's chair was.

Knowing him, he would be positively _chafing_ at being put on a chair without any sort of equal eye levels. Zhang took in my appearance, before staring at Patrick.

"Dear… Brighteye. Do you know his girl?"

Patrick glanced backwards and didn't react at all, giving a really sleazy shrug and turning back to Zhang, crossing his legs like some type of prissy delicate rich ass.

"No. You have your own ways of dealing with spies. Let's return to our discussion," Patrick slurred, his Chinese a little bit off and plain annoying. His whole countenance was the type to just _rub me the wrong way_. From his hair to his shoes, Patrick was entirely a new person.

Kind of scary, now that I thought of it. Maybe he was also an actor, before.

"Oh, it was just that you two looked so _similar_," Hibari's dad drawled, and I added him into my list of _incredibly annoying smarmy bastards_. "Shoot her now, then."

Patrick immediately, according to script, tensed up a little – very, very little, enough so that Zhang would think he caught it because he was just _that good_. No, it was Patrick who was that good. I had been watching for any sign of him tensing, but I couldn't see it even when I was trying hard. Zhang obviously caught it though, and his eyes positively lit up.

Man.

No wonder Hibari had issues.

"Or maybe not… Drag her to the security prisons. We'll keep her there," he said to the guy behind me.

The guard (or second in command, as it may be) hesitated.

"Sir, the other occupant has ruined all but one room. Do you… want to place them together?"

Then a most horrifying thing happened.

Hibari's father _laughed_.

"I pity this girl. You will see why no-one dares to offend the Huang Mei Lei! Put her with the boy!"

I was dragged away backwards like I was _really_ in those crappy period dramas, while Patrick was trying to convince Zhang to do crap with… business (so that's where my research went). Zhang however waved him off, obviously thinking he had an advantage and insisting Patrick go away and think for a week, and come back when he had more favourable terms, promising that if he did, he would return that something important. Obviously me.

I mean, damsel in distress!

Sadly enough, no-one realised the plot twist. The prisoner turns into hero is a cliché in its own right, you know.

Marching along corridors that I had memorised in the map, Hibari was exactly where I had been expecting him to be. When the door was unlocked, another five guards appeared just to shove me it.

With good cause.

I experienced a severe case of déjà vu when Hibari went and tried to lunge at the attackers through the door and escape, just like how he had tried to do that with Ken and Mukuro last time we had been captured together. Yet again, the door closed too quickly, and Hibari scowled at the door before glaring at me…

And blinking in surprise.

I smirked.

Stage two complete.

"Hello, Hibari. I know there are cameras but no bugs. Want to escape?"

* * *

**So guys! Right on time! So the people who read this and read AFS as well (I will be updating that within this holiday, I think). Not updating since the start of uni means... a lot, actually. O_o Wow, it's been a long time!  
**

**But uni is really relaxingly cruel. I have something due EVERY WEEK. TT_TT I guess I shouldn't be stressing so much, and I am calming down now, but still. ^3^ Kind of nervous to go to the anime club's meetings though. I'm always trying to psych myself up to going to them. But you guys come first!**

**I know, this chapter does nothing. But still! Plot progression! I made my mark this time, even if this kind of... lacked some energy (sadly. I'm sorry! I'll do better next time. *ferocious gaze!*. Next time. all goes to hell because of Hibari's legendary stubborness, but for now, I think this is enough. I didn't have much time to edit (so if there are typos, I'll probably go comb through them later, haha!)**

**How are you guys? Please review! I love you all~ I had a friend, who saw the note I posted up yesterday and asked me if I was trying to reverse psych her, because after seeing my plea to get you all not to review, she really really wanted to (but resisted). I laughed, and was like, no. Even if I do psych, I don't try reverse psyching people a lot! hehe. That brightened up my day, after writing this short piece for criminology that was due.**

**Oh! I recently got a PM from AnimexxLover1827 to ask you all to go to her profile and see this contest she got going for her oneshots. She wanted more profile traffic, so here I am advertising. I personally haven't gone to her profile yet though. Maybe after posting this. XD **

**Reiteration: You Guys Are The Best. ^^**


	70. The best laid plans

Alice

You've gone to China, I know. I've told Patrick this, but he insisted that I had to tell you as a basic courtesy. For some reason, he seems to like you, saying you're family and everything.

Be honoured.

I must get to the point. Wend has escaped the household, and no-one knows how. We presume he is going to Japan, but Liza has a suspicion he's going to you. Stay alert.

Anise

* * *

_Hibari had always avoided the topic of his family. Even though Kusakabe was technically in his family, he never pried. As a cousin from a family that had a long history of being a vassal, he was basically his right-hand man, his best friend (as much as he was capable of), and the only blood family he cared for left._

_Everyone knew how mysterious Hibari was. _

_The teacher's never dared question his blank information sheet, the students had a fluctuating rumour mill about Hibari's origins that was based on how vicious he had been that week. The hospital staff only knew every time they bent to Hibari's whims they received immediate monetary funding straight after. The whole town knew he had just appeared, a few years ago, and immediately decreased crime rates around the town. The police force was puzzled with how to deal with an under age justice dealer and had tried to stop him before - but after a large bribe and the reassurance that he wouldn't get himself killed, they couldn't care less._

_Only Kusakabe knew it was more complicated than him being a 'rebellious rich boy'._

_Through their first summer together, warm trembling days of golden sunlight and freedom, Hibari knew Kusakabe wondered. Then slowly, Kusakabe had put together pieces._

_Kusakabe presumed that his father was a hard man who had difficulty in showing consideration for anything but increasing his power. He understood Hibari had run away, like a _coward_, like a herbivore. He understood that Namimori was something of a guilt thing, that having such complete control of this city, knowing he had done something good for people, made him feel useful, strong. Kusakabe also thought that Hibari had the drive to prove something (but what?) and presumed he hated his parents._

_Kusakabe was smart. Most of that was right (he was the one he trusted with his life, after all)._

_However the last one was wrong._

_Hibari hated his father, his strength, his cruel eyes. That sneer that had worn down his family, his confidence, his pride until he had escaped and found strength on his own. His face the stone wall that he had struggled to break when he was four, eight, twelve. Yes, Hibari hated that man, for he was prodigious enough to know a father was supposed to love instead of deride._

_But his mother,_

_Hibari loved his mother._

_Mother had been cold, but mother had been the one to tell him to find freedom. Then he had been weak (too weak), and she died._

_Guilt, shame. Horror, confusion. But he knew what he needed, he knew what he had to do to find himself. None of that could be done with his Father. So he ran, ran towards the town Mother had mentioned with the warmth that she lacked in her life. Namimori. And when Hibari had stepped into that near-city of neon lighted streets that lit up the bright puddles of rain on the streets, he had felt an irreplaceable sense of newness. Of a fresh beginning. _

_Mother... had been weak, but she had proved that some strength did not come from cruelty, from tyranny. She had shown him pride; that subtle defiance that made her shine, made her honourable in face of __**that man**__. A blade tempered by patience, rusted by time, but elegant in the absolute confidence of its great history. Yes, that was Mother._

_For the first few years in Namimori, Hibari had been confused. The world much bigger than he had realised. Clothes were bought, and didn't magically appear in his closet freshly pressed. Houses had to be gone through, checked, with a tonne of paperwork he didn't appreciate. Groceries and market prices fluctuated in ways that didn't fit the economic analysis he had made. Kusakabe helped him through it at first, and he slowly learnt (life) what his mother had that let her die with dignity. _

_Pride. Honour. Belief in herself, and what was right._

_So he could not scorn Tsunayoshi Sawada after he grew a spine. He could not mock his Vongola subordinates when they stood for their beliefs. He could not stamp on the feelings of a little girl, and he could not kick those weak, little animals away. Everyone had their own ways of survival. _

_He just hadn't found his own yet. One day, he would burn himself, he knew. _

_Some days, he stood on the roof of Namimori, and looked down at the chattering students who came in every morning. He would spot the latecomers running down the faraway streets, he could see the his own disciplinary members who regulated the dress code at the entrance. Hibari didn't really want to be at the gate every morning - partly because the fear was only amusing every once in awhile, and it was pretty mundane (ergo, boring). No one quite understood, he always thought at those fearful faces, that he just didn't understand many of the feelings presented to him on a daily basis. Compassion? Love? Kindness, consideration, care, sympathy?_

_He only knew respect through tyranny._

_Slowly, he thinks now, that he is beginning to understand. Why Sawada Tsunayoshi treats him like a comrade. Why his other subordinates like Yamamoto Takeshi smiled at him across the hall and invited him to baseball games (when he had expressed no interest at all). Why Gokudera Hayato didn't care about wearing sloppy uniforms in front of him, and even sneered when he sent to change before being hauled back by the girl and the baseball fanatic. Why Bright (Brighteye) Alice seemed to actually like sleeping on the roof with him with how _often_ she did it, and why Sasagawa Ryohei challenged him to fighting matches. They… liked him. Not because of familial responsibilities, or because they looked up to him as leader._

_So when he got dragged into their ridiculous disputes, he refused to go under their play as Family, but fought all the same. Analysed. Watched. Tried to understand how they could like someone like him. _

_Because if his own parents couldn't love him _

_How could anyone_

_He couldn't_

_It just meant he wasn't_

_(Why did they like him?)_

_So he lashed out, because confusion can easily be turned into anger, frustration into action, and there was always some lawlessness in Namimori somewhere…_

* * *

After my dramatic statement, I waited for Hibari's response. It took me a few seconds to realise Hibari was… a bit not good in his physical health. At least his mind was working right, I was relieved to notice, because he blinked at me before straightening into a scowl (_that's _got_ to hurt)_.

"What are you doing here?" He hissed at me, his hands clenching around imaginary tonfa before relaxing his hands because they weren't there.

I thought the beat down with Mukuro had been bad. There Hibari had been filthy, with blood and sweat that hadn't been cleaned off for days. The bruises were kind of obscured by that you know? It helped that Mukuro's dungeon had been kind of… unsanitary as well. I swear I had scraped by not having infection in that place only because of Grey giving me injections every few months. I still got a little fever afterwards, but nothing a few boring days in the wheelchair couldn't fix.

This dungeon was spotless. It was as if Hibari's family had hired all their cleaners based on their OCD. For heaven's sake, I could see my reflection on the floor, and it was some type of cloudy tile. Likewise, someone had cleaned Hibari up, because he was in prison pyjamas

Well… not really. It's just nothing Hibari would choose to wear, because it wasn't black to reflect his inner emo.

…Rambling to not look at Hibari wasn't working.

"Well, there weren't any other cells left because they were destroyed?" I said in Chinese, my pronunciation perfect but still a bit slow. But I don't think Hibari noticed that, because I _also_ spoke my Japanese slow. Dammit, you would think living in a place for a few years would make you speak faster, but really, all it did was widen my swearing vocab.

Okay, that was maybe Gokudera's fault.

"What do you mean by escape?" His voice continued in that raspy hiss, and I realised with horror it wasn't because he was dehydrated or anything (though that may have been a part of it) but because he had some very big bruises on his windpipe.

"Exactly what I mean," I said, finally being serious. I'd even switched to Japanese. "I'm getting you out of here, Hibari."

He blinked at me, before giving me a resigned "hn". It was a kind of defeated and disbelieving _hn_, and I turned my back on the camera and crossed my arms. I had that small ball of Flame left, and it had about three hours before it ran out, so I sent it to cover the camera. It shouldn't be seeing anything I didn't want it to now.

I turned back to Hibari.

"Don't give me that type of _hn_, Hibari. We won't abandon you here. If someone wants you to become the next head or whatever, they can speak on your own terms."

(Not that Tsuna ever had that chance, but Tsuna had been a person literally living in self-loathing and wallowing in low self-esteem so I think even he knew that this Vongola Boss position is what he would do best).

Hibari closed his eyes.

There were deep bruises underneath them, and his arm looked like a big purple and black mess. There was something looking crusty and brown behind his ear, and his breath was shallow in that painful way that made me suspect a broken rib or two. By how he had collapsed I bet he had some sprains or fractures in his legs too.

_Oh Hibari…_

I crouched in front of him, and his eyes opened to glare at me. Instead of responding normally with a dead-pan expression, I gave him a slight smile.

"You helped us, remember Hibari? You fought with us the whole way, and even if you aren't part of our crowd we will always have a place for you. And you helped me when I got kidnapped with Wend, and I think I would have been in a really bad spot if you hadn't done that. Now you've gotten kidnapped and held against your will by your even more psycho father, it's time to pay you back, right?"

Then Hibari finally spoke.

"You…you're breaking the rules," he rasped.

My face finally blanked. "Oh yeah? What friendship rules am I breaking by trying to rescue you?"

(Because we _were_ friends now, no matter how terrifying he was)

"_You're skipping school_."

…

Uh. Did I hear what I just heard?

"Hibari," I said, putting a comradely hand on his shoulder and patting it gently. I ignored his answering his growl. "We will put that matter aside until we get back into the same country as the school you're mentioning. We will also be vigilant. Someone should come with the second part of the plan soon."

I gave him a concerned eye.

"Don't get offended, Hibari, but can you still fight?"

Hibari gave me a disdainful huff, and shoved my hand off his shoulder with unnecessary strength, and I grinned.

"Good answer. Now we wait."

I uncapped the Grey Flames from the camera, and absorbed them back into me because hey, another few hours of my life here was always welcome you know?

Then I blanked my face, leaning nonchalantly on the wall and leaving nothing interesting for the camera to see. The guards hadn't searched my body too thoroughly – they had totally missed the chopsticks hidden on the inside of my thighs. Which reminded me…

Pretending to massage my thigh like I had a cramp, I slowly manoeuvred the chopsticks to the outside of my thighs for easy access (and probably looked like a moron in the process). I cursed under my breath.

_This_ is why I didn't like field work. Too much undercover crap. Stretching my legs out on the cool concrete, I looked around the place.

Concrete, concrete, concrete.

"They really need to hire an interior designer," I said, because I had to settle my adrenaline somehow. Talking calms my nerves. I usually cloud watched, but considering the situation… "I wonder if you should act more aggressively towards me, Hibari," I said, looking at the window. "Won't they get suspicious that you're acting so nice?"

Hibari merely gave me a glare. "Too late. How did you get in?"

"Cousin. I am also from a powerful family."

"Ah."

There was a silence after that, which I belatedly realised was him asking me to elaborate. Which wasn't wise right now. No matter how safe it _seemed_, these questions could always be answered later.

So I said "Later," and Hibari nodded, adjusting his position gracefully and not as if his breathing was suspiciously wet sounding. I bet, if I got an inside look of his mouth, there would be blood. I was tempted to shake my head in exasperation.

Seriously, macho men and their pride.

Ugh.

* * *

The windows that gave an extremely narrow view of the street had slowly darkened, and the fluorescent lights outside our cell in the corridor flickered on. We were on the first basement floor after all, and any type of high security with shadowy corners only existed in movies. Here, it was bright, clean, sanitary, and kind of looked like the inside of a lab. The corridor outside was straight, with sixteen cells all lined up in the corridor, eight on each side. The corridor was long, brightly lit, and (because this needs more emphasis) _perfectly_ straight.

Two guards were on each side of the exits respectively, four guards that had perfect view of any sort of movement of the doors opening and closing. If there was an escape, and the four guards weren't enough, there were cameras lining the stairs upwards, and at the top were a set of guard sleeping quarters that always held at least twelve highly trained guards resting for their next shift. On both sides. Even after that those exits would be in the middle of the compound, and it would be really easy to get caught from there too. These were just the prisons for hostages and important people.

That's why they had so few cells. The ones for real prisoners were down in the fourth basement level.

Yeah. Those plans made Patrick have a headache too. We were really good at infiltrating those high-tech electronic systems because we were kind of like our own Byakuran in a way. There were a few tech experts that came from really technologically advanced worlds (like Anise), and the security systems that existed here were a joke to them. But old school loyal guards?

We had no mind-bendy power like Mukuro, thank you very much. Us Brighteyes were very against any mind screwing, because well, the only thing we had left were our minds you know?

(It was one of the greatest fears that we Brighteyes had – that Heaven was just this collective hallucination made by some guy with Mist Flames. Who knew? It could happen, in this crazy world of Katekyo Reborn.)

But back to topic. So how would you escape someone through that? How could someone reach a prisoner unsuspiciously in that type of cell?

Well, first step was to get thrown in. This part I'd succeeded, obviously.

The second was scheduled around one forty-two the next morning.

At one forty I woke Hibari up. I had a little timer on the back of one of my teeth (Patrick had the weirdest gadgets. A vibrating tooth wasn't really pleasant) and Hibari immediately tensed and looked wildly around.

"Shh, Hibari." The yellow glow of my eyes were gone, but the black contacts had the same effect as my original eyes. The black actually seemed to have a little green glow strong enough to shed a little light onto his face, even if my silhouette blocked the bars of light that came through the slatted cell door.

"You. Why did you wake me?" Hibari's own eyes were like steel, and I kind of tried not to wince backwards.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering why he wasn't attacking me right now. He must be in worse shape than I thought. I tamped down on the little cord of worry in my chest.

"We're going to move soon." My hands clenched and unclenched, but I stepped backwards, giving him space. I actually suspected Hibari had a mild case of haphephobia, the fear of being touched. He didn't really have an actual problem of being inside crowds, but the probability of being touched inside them. He was an interesting case though – he liked having people around him, as evidenced by him always wanting a roommate in hospital, always sleeping at the school…

Well, I didn't really know. Not really an expert here. I hoped he didn't have that type of aversion though, because things like that happen mostly because of a reason.

I really didn't want to think about Hibari's past.

It was one forty-five now.

Hibari tried to get up, and he actually succeeded before stumbling back down.

The camera blinked at us. The guards were probably a bit suspicious.

"Go toilet, Hibari. We're going to a place where we might not be able to go for a while. I'm not ordering you," I shook my head, hands in a surrender position, "but I'm just advising you for now. I already went, but I thought you might appreciate…"

Hibari just closed his eyes with an annoyed huff, but when his eyes next opened they were hard and shuttered, just like normal, and he hauled himself up with a little difficulty and stayed up. He stumbled towards the toilet. I slid my tongue over my tooth thingy and waited patiently. We had twenty minutes to prepare, after all.

I looked at the windows that lead to the street outside. The slight wash of silvery light was nothing compared to the bright slabs of light coming from the slats in the door. The metal slats were tilted up, so that we couldn't really see anything outside except for maybe the ceiling, while they could probably peer inside our cell at will. Just a few more minutes until the plan. Until it _started_. I patted my hands on my pants, because the was not the time to get nervous. I breathed in, blinked a bit to moisturise the contacts, and closed my eyes.

The plan was rehashed in my head a few more times before Hibari finished. He collapsed back to his place next to the door. I settled next to him, closed my eyes and waited. A little buzz on the back of my tooth told me the time.

One fifty. I turned my face towards Hibari, who I felt was looking at me. I think he understood what I was trying to say, because there was silence, and a tiny shuffle of Hibari's white prison garb. Before I closed my eyes, Hibari was on one knee, gritting his teeth in trying to get up.

When I opened them, it was pitch black except the slight moonlight from the barred windows.

Hibari _had _understand my silent message because he had closed his eyes against the glare of the corridor. My eyes couldn't adjust so quickly, of course, but this would have to be enough. My eyes had an advantage already, and I scanned the cell until I could register the objects inside, if not clearly.

The tile was cool underneath my fingers when I quietly got to my feet.

There was a compound wide black out. The security systems had, of course, backup electricity. The camera in our cell swivelled uselessly to look at the lovely view of the toilet entrance. Those fancy electronic doors and cameras that kept us locked in were useless, because I pressed my tongue to the device at the back of my teeth, and a little beep told me my message was sent.

Two seconds later, the door opened by itself.

Hibari couldn't hide his slightly shocked gaze, and I had to remind myself that he was still only seventeen. Maybe he had forgotten his father was still merely human. There were always bigger fish and hey, in security systems, Patrick had him beat. It was unfortunate these cells were Flame-proof though.

I tried to give him a tight smile, but my face was strangely uncooperative, so I shrugged instead and stepped out the door. It was dark enough that my efforts didn't matter anyway. It was pitch black, actually, except for the silver glow from the cell windows. When we closed the door of the cell behind us, even that was gone. Every breath we made seemed to spread down the hallway in waves of whispers, and I don't think my adrenaline levels have ever been so high. My steps were light, as I led the way to the left, the end that was more far away than the right.

Hibari didn't hesitate, although his breathing was harsh, he wasn't behind me for long. He strode alongside me, because this was _Hibari_ dreadfully wounded or not, and I was suddenly confident that we would succeed. Should have known he would never be broken.

"The exit that we have to reach is that way, but we only have a two minute and forty second gap between the guard shift, and if we're lucky, some additional time from the confusion of the black out. The cameras in the corridor don't have the capability to track in such darkness unlike the cell cameras. We need to reach the end of the corridor in the next thirty seconds," I whispered to Hibari, perfectly audible and uncharacteristically staccato in the corridor. My footsteps were light and silent in comparison to Hibari's unsteady rhythm, but in response to the question he just strode faster, and I accordingly matched the pace until we were at the speed that I felt would let us arrive at the end of the corridor in time. In the best situation we would be running, but even this nearly jog was so obviously dragging Hibari's energy away.

And I wasn't heartless enough to force Hibari's pride and make him run. I pretended this was the best pace to go, but inside I was getting more and more anxious. The guard shift. We had one minute. We were only nearing the end of the corridor _now_ when we should have thirty seconds ago…

Hibari suddenly stiffened, his hands curling, and one arm flung out to stop me as I turned left at the corridor. I bit down on my panic (because really, _what now?)_. We were still right in the corridor, anyone from the other side would see us, we could at least move out of the way. This was how stupid characters got caught!

Then I saw what Hibari saw.

A single cleaner was yawning as he mopped the tile floor, the smell of disinfectant in this place so strong that I hadn't even realised there was a cleaner there. He was in the shadow of the stairway, a very strange place for a cleaner to be, even if he was packing his mops into the cupboard. Because really, it was two in the morning. Who had cleaning shifts at two?

The cleaner then stepped back, blocking the way we needed to go. The corridor was clear behind us, still so straight and such a heavy risk that I wanted to just risk the cleaner. I could knock him out right? To be sure, I sucked at combat compared to the others, but I was alright if the cleaner wasn't a secret ninja in disguise.

But then the iron stairway above him gave way to an ominous tremble of footsteps.

"Suspicious activity cleared, two guards checking prisoners in section H, Level B1," a faint voice said upstairs, and Hibari tensed even more. I didn't even care about the cleaner any more.

I dragged Hibari right into the line of sight of the cleaner and out of the corridor entrance, and the cleaner immediately swivelled and faced us.

He was too far away to reach if he had any security equipment to alert guards on his body, but I had to try. I bunched my legs, and even if I wasn't using my Flames (for emergencies, I chanted in my head) I was still fast. Leaping forward, my hands were already on my chopsticks when he smiled and bowed.

Uh, what?

"The Black sends his regards."

I was already nearly upon him by then, so I immediately reversed momentum, the tiles making it really hard to grip. But I persevered anyway, crouched with my hands clutching the floor, the gloves helping me stop. My 'ready crouch' position that Grey had taught me, once upon a lifetime, was still in premium range to strike just in case I read the situation wrong.

The cleaner was no normal guy.

Because Black?

_Patrick_.

And the stairs trembled.

* * *

_Who was Hibari's Family? No one knew, except that tiny detail that his second in command was his cousin. Kusakabe himself only knew the little details. That Hibari's mother died when he was eight, that his father was a hard, hard man who had lost everything but his ability to increase his power. That Hibari had ran away when he was thirteen and a half, and gained proof of his familial ties in Japan before moving anywhere. That his mother had ushered this little boy into their home with teary eyes and enquired about her sister (the legendary aunt his mother never mentioned) and at Hibari's toneless answer of 'dead' had cried herself to sleep._

_He himself had been intrigued – Kusakabe's family didn't run a dojo, but martial arts were one of the skills that they had prided themselves in, as well as many of the traditional Japanese arts. But this little boy (Hibari Kyoya, he said to himself) had faced him, a person three years older than him, in a duel without sweat, and in two minutes devised a strategy to exploit the two weaknesses he hadn't been able to train out yet._

_That was then he realised that Hibari was special. He had nearly no moral code – anyone was subject to a beating if they had 'sullied the purity of Namimori', even if they were younger teens like himself, or if they were fifty year old drunkards with thinning hair and depression in every sip of their sake. He would 'bite them to death' because he had a fixation of not being weak – fighting was part of that._

_Kusakabe prided himself on being one of the people Hibari Kyoya, this special boy, trusted the most. And he reciprocated by trying to understand him._

_Although he had little sense of ethics, and his concept of power was to have total tyranny, Hibari held the things he held in care with absolute respect. One of them was his family – Hibari had absolute respect for Kusakabe's mother (his father had died in a car crash years ago), and Kusakabe himself for always being honourable (it was an inborn trait)._

_In an interesting paradox, he also held small animals, small cute, _fluffy_ animals in high regard, as well as children who were ten years and younger. The people he saw as strong were challenged to prove his own strength (partly in absolute cocky confidence he would win, and partly because strength was something to be tested). Everyone else were fair game._

_But however long Kusakabe had known him, he had never seen Kyo-san to make a friend._

_It wasn't even because Hibari looked down on friends, or ties, or bonds. He never made quips that people had gotten 'weak' from 'caring too much'. It's just that he was an isolationist – his very bearing made people vie away from him. Kusakabe himself couldn't be his friend, for he had become his assistant and somehow Hibari had made a mental block between that and 'friend'._

_It made Kusakabe so concerned that he repeated a few years in Namimori, doing his high school things in middle school, just to see if Hibari would ever reach out to someone._

_Hibari never reached out to anyone. That was expected._

_But to his surprise, people reached out to _him_._

_That weakling, and 'no-good useless piece of space' Dame-Tsuna was the inheritor of the title Vongola Decimo, the strongest Mafia in the world, a fighter just getting to feet, trying to get people to join him in his quest for Mafia peace (a contradiction in itself) and the most interesting specimen to Kusakabe's eye since Kyo-san._

_Tsuna drew people who were strong (and because of that, so alone) to him._

_First was the transfer student from Italy. Kusakabe's trained eye spotted all his emotional flaws in a few minutes (abandonment, trust, and superiority issues were just a few), and later research adding to that (IQ score of 147 when he was only nine) and somehow… the no-good boy won him over._

_Second and Third, either way, were Yamamoto Takeshi and Bright(eye) Alice. Both were too seemingly perfect, one happy, one resigned (good friends beforehand, similar in ways they both hadn't realised yet) and joined the most clumsy and useless guy at school suddenly, without warning._

_Kusakabe though noted that it was understandable for Yamamoto with his suicide attempt, but Bright(eye)… Then he understood later, with her family and her missions. He understood the duty of family, and he let her be._

_Fourth was Sasagawa Ryohei, who had a loyal team of boxers, had a passion and a will and so much EXTEREME STRENGTH but nowhere to direct it to (fighting, but always only restrained by the ring) that the energy and the fights had drawn him naturally, like fate, like a perfect story, to the chaos that Tsuna made. _

_He didn't understand the choice of the child cow anymore as it did when it first happened. He was a stupid, snot-ridden brat with… lots of potential? Kusakabe knew what potential looked like, and that wasn't it._

_(little did he know)_

_Hibari was sixth. He had been drawn into a world of strength and fighting that came not from betrayal but from loyalty and strength. The members that joined afterwards Hibari didn't care for, because Hibari did not care for them as much as he did these five people who were there from his joining. _

_Even the snotty brat, though that may be because he was under ten years old._

_Friends and Family (and crowds, Hibari would disdainfully sniff. Kusakabe would hide a smile behind his cup of tea dutifully. It wouldn't do to offend his cousin) and all the shades of trust in between._

_Sawada Tsunayoshi and his Family had fought through wars, had fought through time. Through death, through maniacs with superpowers and fighting their enemies back with their own. Hibari had fought with them, not voluntarily at first but increasingly…_

_So he had absolute confidence that Sawada Tsunayoshi would fight for Hibari if he needed. _

_He just had to make sure first…_

_Kusakabe chewed on a piece of grass, as he sat in the co-pilot seat of his family's private plane, the autopilot steadily churning him towards China, and probably off the deep end._

_After hearing Yamamoto Takeshi's alarming report of the Brighteye's movements, he had decided he needed to follow. Hibari was clearly in more trouble than he had realised, if the Brighteye had moved herself. Although Kusakabe himself was clearly at a disadvantage, and he had never really went to China before, he had contacts._

_He could go._

_Hibari was his family, after all. Blood, duty, family and leader. The thought of ignoring this didn't even go near his head as he lifted off into the air. _

_Hibari did not realise he had much more than he thought._

* * *

The cleaner was one of Patrick's agents. That was clear. Hibari was looking at my arrested motion with a considering face, before he started slowly towards us. The stairs to the upper street level (where the stairs lead) were long, because that was a security measure in itself.

I got up from my crouch, and hid my chopsticks again, and bowed back.

"The yellow is clear."

The cleaner dude was not perturbed at all by the steps coming down closer and closer, and tilted his head and gestured a hand towards the closet, where he hadn't actually been putting mops in, but… pulling them out?

"Please, hide inside," he said politely. And bah, Asian countries and their manners.

I just headed inside, giving him a slight smile for thanks. Hibari hesitated a bit, before I looked at him and nodded. After Hibari had stepped inside, the cleaner held up the few mops that he had pulled out, stepped inside the closet with us and stood the mops up like a really flimsy wall. Not even joking, there were like, three mops standing between us and certain imprisonment.

…I bet there was irony somewhere.

Well, there was another crazy thing I could tick off in my list. Like, in a random Vongola boasting contest or something. I would contribute something like

"_And yeah, I had a severely injured comrade next to me, and some random dude that I just met and we were all stuffed in a closet, the random dude started propping up mops in front of us like, you know, all effective like. And it worked."_

Yes.

It worked.

You know why?

The cleaner, after propping up his mops, closed his eyes and concentrated, and the ring that I thought was a _wedding ring_, started glowing with Mist Flames.

Since Illusions didn't really affect me (even Mukuro's illusions only gave me at the faint outline of what he was projecting, and he was one of The Strongest out there), I only saw a faint shimmer of the closet door that the cleaner dude was projecting. But Hibari's eyes suddenly focused on an object I couldn't see, and I knew it was working.

I watched the faint shadow of the stairwell through the illusion, trying to ignore the mops. I knew that some illusionists, even strongish ones, needed something to prop their illusions. Just a solid construct for the Flames to cling to.

It was entirely due to Mukuro and Chrome's skill that that was entirely unneeded. In fact, I don't think even Tsuna knew that most illusionists needed a prop, because all of the illusionists he had faced were the crème de la crème.

After another fifteen seconds or so, the two guards finally reached the bottom and sighed at the pitch black corridor. I watched through the hazy illusion as they tugged out a few flashlights, and walked forwards. The two guys were chatting about something. Complaining about the faulty electrical system and how this wasn't the first time this happened…

I remembered coming across this in Huang Mei Lei's finances.

Heh. I mentally applauded Patrick's skill with planning. No wonder the guards weren't panicked or rushed. I waited in anticipation.

Then there was a surprised shout, and a voice talking into a phone, or a communicator of some sort.

Then the cleaner dude grunted out loud, his Flames burst out stronger, and then one of the guards shouted out "I think I saw something," and the two guards rapidly talked through the phone to 'increase security in Sector G' as they 'went into pursuit' or something like that. Sector G was the opposite direction to where we needed to go. This would make our escape much easier. I spoke aloud.

"We have a three minute gap now to go to our next destination. Will you be alright down here if we leave you?" I said towards my Family's agent.

The cleaner dude didn't even dare open his eyes, but nodded. I put a gentle hand on his shoulder, before taking two mops and moving them aside. Immediately, Hibari's eyes snapped towards the outside, and the illusion was broken.

That was the weakness of using props for illusions.

"Thank you very much. You will be remembered for your services," I said to the cleaner as Hibari awkwardly clambered out, and I rearranged the two mops back into their original places as much as I could. The closet remained open for a few more seconds before mops, closet and all were just part of the wall.

Hibari glanced at the staircase.

"Going up is suicide," he said flatly, the flatness in his voice having an undertone of grimness.

"I agree," I said, already moving. "I'm sorry, time is of the essence. We are going this way."

The softness of our voices didn't hide the increased pace of some guards coming down the stairs to access Section G. We were in H – the straightness of the corridor was a shortcut of sorts to G. But that wasn't where I wanted to go.

Hibari followed, but not without a tightness around his mouth, and I was one of those strange people who were glad of insubordination I guess, because Hibari working extra hard to not 'follow' me was all the reassurance I needed to keep going.

The Huang Mei Lei had a few shortcuts here and there, but this one was abandoned not only because of untrustworthy foundations and a previous underground river making anything built on it damp and not good for maintenance, but because some genius engineer had built a shortcut above-ground that was unobtrusive and much more efficient.

The exit we were going to go through had been closed for at least two decades.

We went deeper into Level B1, white tile suddenly replaced by dark wood. A right turn, straight, T-junction, turn left. It was getting dustier and dustier as it went on, and our footprints were becoming clearer and clearer. I tried not to let that get to me too much, and watched Hibari instead. He was breathing raggedly now, his damaged throat and his ribs not giving much leeway in giving him air to breathe. And it was so _dusty_ in here too. I flipped black hair out of my face, until we reached the end of the corridor.

Hibari was looking at the end of the corridor and me, puzzled, when I crouched and tried to squeeze my small fingers into a crack in the panelling of the wall and pull. It was still really dark, but I was reassured by that. Guards meant light.

"Hibari, while I do this, can you pace around here like we were frustrated and then walk back towards the T-junction and walk straight to the other end of the corridor and retrace your footsteps backwards until you come back" And since that sounded like an order… "If you're too tired to, it's fine." I was legit worried, so it even sounded a little genuine.

At the last sentence, I even injected more compassion than needed; Hibari shot me a small glare and started walking back up the hallway.

Predictable to a fault. I put any amusement I had into energy.

Damn this panel was stiff.

Hmm… I stepped back and looked at it critically before realising, _oh_. Of course Patrick wouldn't let any forgotten passages become useless. They were the lifeblood of any mole who needed escape, or fast untracked passage to somewhere for alibi.

I slid the panelling left, into the wall, and it went without even disturbing any dust. Now there was a hole big enough for me to crawl through into. There were air-currents, damp and smelling like summer rain, with a whiff of rock and dusty wood. I was concerned if Hibari would fit though, because he might have, normally, if he wasn't injured but he _was_…

I started pacing, and making the dust as churned up as possible so no-one would realise where what direction we went, before following Hibari's footsteps to the other side, and stepping backwards through my footprints when I headed back. I passed and caught up to Hibari, and we both ended back where we first started at nearly the same time. There, Hibari was looking at the hole in surprise.

"Please go first, Hibari," I said as quietly as possible. I thought I saw a flicker of light when I was heading back, and I wasn't sure if it was my paranoia or what, because although this corridor didn't have cameras because it was so old doesn't mean people wouldn't find our dusty footsteps soon. "I have to check something. I'll be right back."

I tried stepping in my footsteps again, but even before I took five steps my sensitive eyes realised that lightening _wasn't_ my imagination.

Huang Mei Lei were really efficient.

I didn't curse under my breath, because I wasn't that stupid to want to _talk out loud_ when people were searching for you (unlike many other missions where Tsuna or some other guy wanted to talk battle plans in the middle of a battle. And unlike Tsuna, I didn't have a split personality so…) I kept quiet, and just helped Hibari try and not smear the dust as he went down.

Well, he didn't really need my help, because once I even did an aborted motion to even _try_ helping he just slid down himself with nigh a glimpse of pain and I just sighed at stupid masochistic stubborn men.

I slid down myself, surprised by a small bag hanging on the back of the panel. I opened it, and realised it was dust, and just sprinkled enough of it in front of the panel to make it look like no-one had slid underneath a seemingly impenetrable wall and go slide the panel shut before the light could get any closer.

It slid shut, and I tried to find something the lever it shut just in case anyone did try to open it. There was little metal handle for people to open it on this side, but if I could tie that hook with that nook in the wall, we would be set. I was really amateur at this stuff, so we would get found out sooner or later, but if people realised the panel was just a 'normal' panel it would get them off our backs better.

So.

Uh…

It was a small wood corridor, and there was nothing like any sort of stick or string that I could use.

I frowned at it, before Hibari's elbow nudged me aside (_rude!)_ and used a piece of bloody bandage and tied it shut with an efficient knot.

Wow, had Hibari been in the boy's scouts before?

Wait, no, bad brain, get back on topic. Escape now.

Downside to that was that Hibari's wrist wasn't bandaged anymore. Those bruises got to hurt.

The corridor was too low for even me to walk upright, and it was suddenly _really_ clear that Hibari couldn't manage to walk hunched over, and he was at least three-quarters of a head taller than me. One step had him gasping, and he turned his head away as a hand tried to hide how he clutched at his ribs. The wet sound in his breathing was back, and I was suddenly angry at Zhang, because this was his _son_ and no matter how stubborn they may be this wasn't anywhere close to remotely _right_.

I frowned at him, trying to curb my self-righteous fury before pausing and putting a hand on his shoulder.

He tensed, but that was expected. I looked forward, determined, until his shoulder had relaxed a little bit. Then I slid an arm around him, forced an arm around my shoulder, and I didn't dare look at his face when I stepped forward. Hibari wouldn't like me to see his weakness, so I didn't.

After a hesitation, he stepped forward too.

And we went forward into the darkness, every step closer to where we needed to be.

* * *

I had better night-vision than most, I knew. If there was even a slight sliver of light I could take advantage of it, but it really was very dark in the passage, and time had worn down the path so that even after we had cleared the low bit, the old wood underneath us had rotted away in the damp so much that when Hibari made an aborted motion to push me away I only tightened my grip and manoeuvred around a hole in the floor.

This continued until I turned left, to go underneath the main compound and then it was a newer part of the compound, and there was something like cobblestone beneath our feet. Hibari made to straighten up, and I let him this time. I let go, and Hibari gave a shuddery breath, stood still for a few moments before moving forward.

I didn't feel a need to say anything, for the silence though tense with vigilance wasn't the type to need words to fill. He understood that I hadn't mean any insult to his strength and that was enough for now.

It was enough, and maybe it was true when the others said me and Hibari got along better than the others of the Family, because we fell into a pattern of correcting each other, moving along and not arguing as much as I thought it would. I imagined Yamamoto's laughter, as close to a brother that I had in this world, and it brought as much of a smile as it could in these circumstances. He really was the Rain, able to wash away troubles even so far away.

And Hibari's shoulder was there when I listed to the side because of a mixture of exhaustion, a pothole and the dark.

We didn't say anything and moved forward.

For that was how we were.

* * *

_Yamamoto looked at his phone in worry and kept it close to him, even in baseball practice (he laughed it off with his baseball team saying that he was waiting for a call he can't miss for his life) and maybe he was glad the Shimon were here, because he thought…_

_Enma and Tsuna had been talking about homework, and he was humming happily behind them with Gokudera glaring angrily at everything just like usual – Gokudera was always so funny – when Enma tensed. And Tsuna immediately sharpened his gaze, his gaze swinging towards the tree outside the second storey window and there was a boy there. A man-boy, something was wrong with his features, and he recognised them immediately because…_

"_Wend," Enma stated quietly, his voice quiet with repressed emotion. Anger, frustration, joy? He didn't know, but Yamamoto put a hand on Gokudera's elbow for now, because he sensed something, and he was sure that Tsuna noticed it too. _

_Something was strange._

_Alice had said he had been put into the most secure ward of the Brighteye's mansion. How can he be here? Enma opened the window._

"_Oh, don't you all worry about me." Wend waved. "There's something far more important for now. I have to go somewhere for some answers," said this person who had acquired a twisted sense of immortality said nonchalantly, "and I need a contact that I don't have but you do."_

"_How can you be here?" Enma said, his voice still quiet and his face starting to furrow and red Flame starting to curl around his hands and eyes. Then a hand pushed him gently back, and Enma immediately subsided._

_Tsuna, his leader, was back. His eyes strong, his back straight and pulling on his gloves, he looked out the window at Wend. Suddenly, Reborn appeared on Tsuna's shoulder, and they all stared at Wend. "What information can we give that you don't have? You proclaimed to the Leader of Alice's Family last time, you remember," Tsuna asked calmly. It was Gokudera who noticed the slight trembling in Tsuna's fingers however, not Yamamoto, and he stood up behind Tsuna who shot him a grateful smile._

"_I ran away, see. I need a number. I heard you know Byakuran?" Wend gave a yawn, and a lazy smile. _

"_Byakuran?" Tsuna blinked in surprise. "He might still be in Japan but I don't…" Reborn was already holding a phone to his ear however, and Tsuna's eyes bugged out. "Reborn! What are you doing?"_

"_Silence, Dame-Tsuna," Reborn just said, whacking his student's head. "I have a suspicion…"_

_A cheery ring-tone started down the corridor, and stopped. And everyone was taken aback when Byakuran stepped around the corner, phone to his ear as he gave a cheerful wave. "Reborn! Such an honour for you to call me right now~"_

_Reborn snapped his phone shut._

"_I knew it. I thought I saw someone sneak in."_

_Byakuran only gave a friendly grin, before looking at Wend._

"_I still have some of my power you know. I know why you want me, Wend."_

"_Oh?" Wend sent him a challenging smirk, his white eyes disconcerting in his face. "Then you should know where I need to go." He hopped off the tree, landed in a roll, and just started walking down out of the school._

_Byakuran started to turn away too._

"_Wait! What are you two going to do?" Tsuna asked._

_Byakuran's eyes twinkled. "Why don't you follow me then, and see? This should be quite important to you all too… in the future." And Byakuran chuckled, and walked off._

_Tsuna's eyes widened, as something clicked in his head. This was important somehow. This was _important somehow,_ but how, but what…_

_The letter from the future. The letter from his future self that told him to stay close, to notice this, notice that the dice have started to roll. The timer had started counting down…_

_It had started._

_Tsuna didn't hesitate to follow, and Gokudera and Yamamoto glanced at one another. One slouched, another grinned, and they walked behind him._

_What else could they do, but follow?_

* * *

We had to escape by morning, I knew. Any time after morning would be to the Huang Mei Lei's advantage, because then most of their resources and information gatherers would be able to report, and their net would become smaller and smaller… Hibari knew that too, and we walked as fast we could forward. These paths had been part of the original compound, so there were of course rests, and vents and drains and things that would make living there better.

There were stairs in front of us now.

"Hibari, these stairs lead to the surface. To the right, ten steps or so, there is an old drain that your father thinks has been filled since your grandfather's age. It is covered with grass, but the indent should be clear. Lift it, and crawl down the ladder. I'll follow."

I didn't bother questioning his strength. I was much too tired right now – and I knew my scrawny arms couldn't manage it. Hibari had to manage it, since the alternative was to get captured and I killed.

Hibari didn't even bother giving me an affirmative, and strode up the stairs until there was a lever concealing the entrance into the gardens. There was a little periscope on the side, where Hibari was looking now, into the gardens. He deemed it safe, pulled the lever, and I was left scrambling to get up behind him.

The moonlight was a mixed blessing, because it gave us light for the next half minute or so, but Hibari's blinding white clothes were so _noticeable_.

He didn't waste time. I closed the entrance to the secret tunnels, tapped the little periscope back down, and followed to where Hibari was kneeling, eyes scanning the garden nervously. It was weird standing in the open like this.

Hibari grunted, and I quickly kneeled and felt around the indent. My finger caught on something an inch underneath the grass, and with a click, Hibari's effort was slowly lifted up inch by inch. I tried my best to help, and it was a little faster.

It got high enough that I could place it on my shoulder.

Hibari went down first.

Then I did, the grass covered metal plate forcing me down the ladder much faster than I would have liked. Hibari had gone down more than I had realised, _thank goodness_, because I would have smushed his fingers.

I didn't dare to even _breathe_, because that clang had been pretty loud. I fumbled for the catch that I had opened on the outside, and found a little lever that I closed with a little effort.

Then we went down. Down, down, down, down until I heard Hibari land in a little splash, and he walked a few steps out so I could land too. And I peered down the tunnel, forced my tired brain to remember, and turned left.

"Nearly there," I said to myself, and I think Hibari knew that I wasn't talking to him because this time he walked forward to go in the lead and I let him, letting the greyed colour of his clothes lead the way.

* * *

_Grey heard an explosion, and an alarm started ringing throughout the house. Someone had tried to breach the front gate of the mansion. He was up immediately since he had been in a light sleep anyway. His mind had been half anticipating Miss coming back with her companion. Her favourite pumpkin soup was on the stove, still warm, and the blankets he had prepared for them on the back of another chair. They would probably be tired, and her companion injured. But it seems like that plan of action wouldn't happen now._

_He took the pot of soup (still warm, he nodded in approval) into the refrigerator before going into the security room where he found Yuan and Patrick with the maid at the entrance slotting some slim knives into their respective places. He strode in with a polite nod to her, and she let him in with a slight smile._

_"What's happening?" He asked, watching the security footage from cameras outside. There were a group of black clad people surrounding their mansion, but their explosive had failed to breach the front gate. Didn't expect them to be reinforced by both Lightning and Cloud Flames, probably._

_Patrick gave a laugh. "Alice succeeded, of course. If she hadn't, they wouldn't be here. If they escaped and got caught, they would be still be in their compound. If they failed to escape at all, why the alarm? The plan is still going well, even if she can't come back here now." He frowned, finger tapping his chin in thought. "I didn't expect the Huang Mei Lei to be so aggressive. We have covered our tracks well – even if they think it is us, it should only a suspicion. After all, after our meeting in the morning they had another three in the afternoon with marginally aggressive families in the area."_

_An electronic message suddenly arrived on the screen, and Yuan immediately sat behind the desk and started typing, running a few programs before sitting back. "It's not a harmful file, Patrick."_

_Patrick nodded. "A good hacker in that family. Probably Mai. He'd always had a knack for security systems. Open it."_

_A wall of text opened, and Patrick scanned through the Chinese characters quickly, and his face turned contemplative as he looked through the other screens._

_"A threat so early in the game? But we have to hold our position as the weaker of the two groups. Alice hasn't successfully reached a safe house yet. If they had done this after we had Hibari, we would have our leverage. I wonder if that's why they're acting so soon. Hmm…" Grey watched as the short man pulled a chair over to the screens. "Yuan," he said with dramatic aplomb, "tell them we are confused at their sudden attack, we feel vulnerable and confused and whatnot, and we're wondering why they are doing this?"_

_Yuan quickly typed this message, and then gave her seat to Patrick. He quickly edited the message, before reading over it again and sending it out._

_It took ten minutes until the next message came._

_Patrick read it, before frowning and typing a quick message out._

_It took less time this time for the next missive to come. Grey was wondering if he should go back down to pack away the medical kits he had put out, since it seemed like Patrick had it well in hand before he paused. He knew that expression._

_Something was wrong._

_The screen was showing some grainy black and white footage. __Grey quickly read over Patrick's shoulder and scanned through the last two messages the sent over._

_The third message quickly detailed that they suspected them in kidnapping their heir of the family, and apologised for their violent actions if they were truly confused and alarmed. If they wanted the Huang Mei Lei not to attack their house, they only needed some insurance sent over to them as a sign of innocence. After their innocence had been proven, their insurance would be returned unharmed._

_Patrick had replied that yes, they would be glad to send a proof of their insurance._

_The fourth message then asked for either the man or the girl in the video. They reasoned that they realised that Patrick had welcomed relatives into his home the other day, and it would only be fair if they demanded a relative for a relative._

_Grey raised both white-streaked eyebrows and resisted the urge to twirl his moustache._

_Hoho, what is this?_

_"Grey, we have to hold this up after we agreed to it," Patrick said unhappily. "I don't want—"_

_But Grey only shook his head with a slight smile. "Allow me time to prepare myself. It's been awhile since I have been on field."_

_Patrick pouted. "Exactly! You shouldn't be doing this!"_

_It was with a slight smirk that Grey slowly undid his tie and unbuttoned his gentleman's vest._

_"Everyone may have forgotten who I was before, but now that Miss's and your safety is in the question, I may allow myself to remember. Excuse me please, I will leave in about fifteen minutes." Then he walked out the door, feeling that familiar confidence that he had in his days of prime settling back into his bones. A crackle of green travelled from his fingers as he styled his moustache absent-mindedly._

_Patrick watched Grey walk down the stairs with a small frown on his face before glaring at the monitors._

_"It seems I have been a little remiss, Yuan. The Huang Mei Lei have gotten cocky."_

_"Yes, Patrick."_

_"I may have to remind people why no-one had dared to attack the Brighteye directly for the last few decades."_

_"I will gladly assist you. May I suggest something first?"_

_Patrick's black eyes opened._

_"Oh yeah, Alice! I have to text her to go to safety house three. Okay, that first, and then…" he gave a pleasant smile. "Revenge. No-one threatens family and gets away with it."_

* * *

Hibari and I had reached the streets, and there was an agent standing there waiting for me as I expected. But instead of only handing me a phone for communication, they gave me a map as well, with a small red circle circled over a house that were three districts over. I frowned at it.

"The black sends his regards and a warning." He pressed some clothes into my hands.

Then he melted back into the lightening sky. I pursed my lips. Dawn was coming. We had to hurry. Something must have happened and I couldn't back to Patrick's base and to this house instead. After I had read the map and oriented myself, I gave it to Hibari. He took it, and then tucked it into his pocket.

His pure white clothes would be a problem, but the shirt that was obviously too big for me must be his. Dark blue, and cotton. I gave him the shirt and pants, before taking the green shirt and black skort for myself. I guess enemies thinking you have a skirt on _do_ underestimate you…

I tucked the phone resolutely in my pocket, because I couldn't have anything distracting me. If I knew Grey, or Patrick, or even Yuan was in trouble I would _definitely_ be distracted. The neighbourhood we surfaced at was kind of posh and big, but the map had outlined the safest way to go.

I muttered in my head as we went.

"Okay, things went wrong. That's cool. That happens. It's okay," I chanted to myself as Hibari and I had ducked into yet another alleyway. We were slowly getting to the poorer districts – instead of glass skyscrapers or huge sprawling traditional houses, there were high rise apartments with air conditioning stains, dust streaked with laundry hanging out the window. We were getting close to Patrick's third safe house, as plan C stated. Just get to the nearest safe house if things went to absolute chaos.

According to the map… yes. I rearranged the directions in my head, and tried to remember if Patrick's route had included any secret shortcuts near here.

Hibari was still strangely silent next to me, but his breathing had become harsher. Not that I was complaining that he was quiet, because anything that made my life easier was a blessing right now. Like my dyed black hair, for example. Just imagining avoiding agents on their home ground with _grey hair_…

Ugh. That would be such a bother, and a pain, and totally impossible.

But I was becoming very worried about him.

"We've two streets to go, Hibari. We're nearly there."

He didn't give me a derogatory glare. He just kept his gaze forward. I hadn't ignored the red smears inside his white shirt when he took it off. But there was nothing we could do now, and we were nearly there.

Nearly.

The nondescript house was nestled in between a few apartments on one side, and a few similar but homey looking houses on the other. It was one of those gated house complexes for the upper middle class. We were the one in the middle of the residency, but there was a shortcut through the back for residents, and in the pocket of my skort there had been a resident's card. I slid it through the security gate, and it opened. I smiled sunnily at the security guard there, and he just nodded at me and Hibari, who had stopped limping just for this guy, and I was glad when we reached Patrick's house.

I slid the card into the electronic lock, and it slid open with a whir.

Hibari stumbled inside, and I quickly closed the door.

I turned around to try and find the bathroom because that was where Patrick had put his medkit in his house and it would probably be the same here. But then I saw Hibari had actually collapsed in the hallway, and I swallowed at such a visible sign that Hibari had not been the terminator I had took him for. His face had been thinner than I remembered anyway, so he probably hadn't been given food either.

Then I set my face and grabbed him carefully, flipping him over.

Gosh, what was he made of? _Gold?_ How heavy was he?

Huffing at just turning him over, I gave up on the idea of dragging him anywhere. Instead I went upstairs and found the bedroom. Dragging some pillows and a thick blanket down, I nestled a pillow beneath his head, rolled him over again (I hope his ribs wouldn't get worse because of this) and lay down the blanket, and rolled him back so that the blanket was underneath and he wouldn't be lying on the hard ground. Narrowing my eyes, I went upstairs and grabbed another blanket from a closet and covered him with it, before putting another pillow between his head and the wall just in case he banged his head on it.

Good. Hibari can sleep this out. I would start cooking from the things that they had stocked, and look at the message that Patrick sent me.

I carefully cleaned out my previous clothes, didn't take of my chopsticks just in case but took out the slightly crumpled letter I had took from the room this… last morning? And put it on the kitchen table.

Switching on the cell phone, I read the text and paled.

* * *

_Tsuna marched with Byakuran straight to Namimori hospital, before they arrived at Jared's hospital room. The boy's gaze was as empty as ever, staring out the window still. There were fresh flowers that Tsuna recognised that Alice had been grasping a few days ago when she said bye. She'd been visiting him?_

_Just like Alice._

_Wend was looking at Jared with a weird look on his face, remorse and confusion battling it out on his face before they stepped in. Then his face was wiped clean, and he had the vaguely disturbing smile on his face again. That smile that mocked them with 'something I know that you don't' that sometimes Alice wore with much less compassion._

"_You know what to do, Byakuran."_

_Byakuran gave him a cross look. "I swear I should be paid for this. Retrieving someone's soul from voluntary hiding isn't easy you know. You broke the boy when he was fragile."_

"_Technically, Alice did by telling him the truth. Just goes to show the truth might not always be the best thing to say," Wend said cheerfully. "You're wasting my time. Aren't you going to do it?"_

_Byakuran gave a tiny hum, before reaching into his pocket and retrieving a pill. He then walked forward._

"_And he wouldn't even be grateful for this. The things I do for that Brighteye!"_

_Then he proceeded to force the pill down Jared's throat, and they all watched with fascinated horror until Byakuran stepped backwards with a satisfied nod. "Okay, job's done, ciao!"_

_Reborn looked at him speculatively, but let him leave as Jared's arms twitched and moved on their own accord. He blinked, before cradling his head in his hands. "What happened? Last thing… I…"_

"_Hey Jared! I need you help again today!"_

_Jared visibly started at Wend's voice, and when he saw him his face turned from confused, to understanding to fury._

"_**You!"**_

"_Yes, me. I will explain to you why I did what I did if you come with me right now. I am not lying." Wend looked into Jared's __eyes, and seemed satisfied by what he saw there. "You had always wanted all the answers before judging. Yes, we will need to go to China now. I understand Alice is there."_

_Huh? Alice was in China?_

"_I'd advise you use that phone now, Rain Guardian." Wend nodded to him, and both Gokudera and Tsuna turned to face him in confusion. Reborn kept looking at Wend though, who was helping Jared get off the bed, though Jared seemed to loathe touching him._

"_But first, contact Chrome Dokuro."_

_Tsuna made a huff of confusion. He didn't know _what was going on here._ "Why should I do that?"_

_Wend only gave him an indecipherable smile as he passed him, Jared stumbling behind him through the door and into the hospital corridor._

"_Read that letter you got in the future, little Vongola."_

_And he was gone._

_They were heading out of the hospital when Yamamoto's phone rang. Yamamoto's face settled into a smile, as he forced his tone to be happy. Tsuna and Gokudera paused to look back at him, as he greeted the person on the other side of the phone._

"_Hi! You're Alice's cousin aren't you?"_

* * *

Grey was a hostage to the Huang Mei Lei. I tried not to hyperventilate and made myself remember how he always trounced me in any shooting matches, was a martial arts master, was a supreme butler and extra good cook. With all that in his arsenal, he would have charmed the socks off everyone, cooked them extra good breakfast, and out machoed any posturing males that wanted to intimidate him.

Right?

Imagining Grey flexing his muscles at Hibari's dad (the stupid-marble-face) derailed my thoughts a bit until I realised that the grunting noises weren't from my worried daydream, but from the hallway.

Hibari stared at me gripping the phone, and I tried to force myself to relax for real this time.

"The med kit is in the bathroom downstairs, and there are some clothes there too if you want to shower. I've got some rice cooking, and after that I can make fried rice."

Practically the only thing I knew how to cook. Hashbrowns didn't count when you just baked pre-made ones.

"…Hn."

Then he shuffled off to the bathroom, and I noted that we needed a doctor quickly. He looked much better after he had slept on his impromptu bed though, thank goodness.

I had texted Patrick back, saying we're fine, and to text back when there was a plan of action ready. He hadn't texted back yet. No news was good news right? Nothing bad had happened yet.

_Yet._

Ugh, _Grey was in enemy territory because of me_.

Damn it.

The rice still needed ten minutes or so, and when I roused myself to fry some rice with some beef, eggs, onions and random green stuff I found in the fridge, I was nearly finished when Hibari came back in. I tried not to burn myself when I tipped the rice onto a plate and scrounged for two bowls. He approached and took the plate of rice to the table while I searched for two spoons, before finding them and bringing them back.

We ate in silence, and I desperately tried to find something to say.

"Uh…" My eyes spied the letter between bites of rice. "I found this letter in the compound when I was going around trying to bide for the right time to get caught. It was directed at you, since I don't think there would be another Kyoya in a Chinese family, right?"

I picked it up and handed Hibari the letter, and his look was indecipherable as he stared down at it. After a pause, he spoke.

"This is my mother's handwriting. Where did you get it?"

"I found it in a dusty room, where a book had blown over. The letter was under it. The room was colourful, and near the really colourful gardens. Lots of flowers." I scratched my head, but there wasn't anything else I could really say directions-wise.

He then shifted his gaze to me, before shaking his head.

"Thank you. I will go and read it now."

I turned away so that he could have his privacy, listening to the rustle of pages as I ate, basically, mentally hashing out what could go wrong in the next time Patrick texted me.

Which was basically a lot.

I resisted the urge to sigh, as I stared out into the darkness. I had drawn the blinds closed, just in case. But darkness was getting old, and I was tempted to switch on the lights even though the dim light from the dawn was seeping through the curtains.

* * *

Hibari looked down at the letter in his hand, and the girl who had given this to him. He was confused, and irritated, because he couldn't escape by himself. But he couldn't have escaped in the way that she had shown him, all those corridors and hidden passages inside the very house he had grown up in. That even _he_ didn't know of.

It wasn't logical to blame his weakness when it was ignorance that aided his recapture when he had escaped by himself.

But the past is what it is now, and he was wise enough to let the past flow over him as he could not change it. He might not understand as much as he did (unconsciously) about his… comrade? Because he had accepted her help, and now he was nearly free. They had to be ready for action any time, so they should try to rest she had mentioned unassumingly. Slowly, slowly, like if they moved, it wouldn't affect the world as it flowed around them.

He wondered if this was how it felt like to be her, to have the world fly around not noticing you, while you watch, wait, and learn. He had always been the one to draw attention, while she could switch that on and off at will. Now he could watch for the first time, and he found he didn't dislike that, or her, as much as thought he would. But he was tired now, tired and hurting and just bone-deep exhausted from the years he had tried to escape his father's hands.

The wooden chair was digging into the bruise into his back, but he didn't give in because he was not that weak yet.

Not yet. He took a small bite of the steaming hot rice in front of him, and found it wasn't spectacular, but edible.

He trailed his fingertips over the envelope. _Mother_, he thought, _he hadn't become that weak yet. _

Hibari remembered his mother as a not-so-distant figure. She was the regal figure who sat by his father's side at meetings, at meals, always dignified and composed. Hibari had mistakenly thought that she had been proud to be at his side, a bird who had deemed his father worthy to fly to and stay with. As it was with children, whose only real contact with understanding the world are parents and people in the household, he thought his life was perfect and that all children had lives like these.

He first found out he was different when he was three years old – memories start staying in the mind at three, and later on he had been relieved to see he had not been _so_ different to be remember from the start of his life – when he segregated from other children. When his classes became tougher and harder until he was struggling with retaining his knowledge. None of his tutors indicated it was anything extraordinary, his father merely looked at his results with a low hum, and the servants were always faceless in their silence.

It was his mother who would break out into a rare smile (he had noticed then, around then, maybe four, he didn't know) and lean down to hug him. He would stiffen, not because he didn't want that warmth or comfort, but because he didn't know what was appropriate. Whenever he did make up his mind to imitate the position of her arms around him, mother would have let go with a rueful tint to her eyes. But she never stopped, hugging or once, kissing him (he remembered still how weird it felt).

And he noticed then, noticed, maybe when he was four, that mother never smiled, never laughed, only sat and stared whenever they weren't alone. Mother was a cold figure whenever she was outside, and she was always outside, paraded, living the life of luxury that the rich afford.

Mother was the one who had told him he was special.

_Hibari_, she would say to the window where beautiful gardens twisted rainbows to her whim, _you do not have to prove anything to anyone other than yourself_. Her hair would hang down, and he liked it that way because he could tentatively twist his fingers in it, and mother was always be more soft when it was down. Outside, her hair was always up.

_Hibari_, she would say on a walk next to the wall, trailing her fingers over wood and concrete and stone, _remember you are free, that you are strong._ She would trail her eyes up to the sky then, looking beyond the leaves, the sky, space and its wonders towards something only she could see. Death, maybe.

_Hibari_, she said, coughing into a handkerchief delicately but her posture anything but_, remember your pride. _Her eyes would blaze then, and on those days she would sit especially stiffly at the table, her movements less graceful.

And then she was gone, with one final whisper of her will.

_Hibari_, she would say_, remember you are my son, and you are my pride._

Then she was gone, and he could never ask why, if he was her pride, why she ignored him when his father called him Wang Lei, why his father hated her, why he couldn't understand the other children, why everyone whispered behind their hands, wondered what a prodigy was, why she was leaving, why she was _leaving him alone_

But the dead do not talk

The final sleep

And years later he can still see her ghost, a never smiling sitting vigil at the window looking at the snow that killed her.

He opened the envelope and read.

* * *

_Kusakabe stepped off his plane, and smiled at Fon who had stood outside waiting for him with a car._

_"Hibari has successfully escaped his family's compound, but there are still complications. If you step into this car, you cannot back out. Are you sure you want to continue?"_

_The former Storm Arcobaleno looked good, calm and unrushed, unflappable as always. His small red sleeves had been tucked neatly away, as he looked at Kusakabe as if they were equals. Kusakabe felt honoured, for he was nowhere remotely equal to this man._

_"There has never been a question." Kusakabe took out the piece of grass he always chewed on, and dropped it on the floor. "I am and always will be glad to help Hibari."_

_Fon gave a small smile, before bowing and leaping onto his shoulder. The door was opened for him by a black-spectacled man, and Kusakabe slid in. The door closed, and the man entered the driver's seat and revved the car._

_"Then you are a welcome to meet Alice's cousin, Patrick Brighteye. We are certain your skills and loyalty will come of use in our endeavour."_

_Kusakabe tilted his head in solemn agreement, and watched as the airport melted away in vast urban sprawl._

* * *

**Now, I took a long break again guys! And I'm sorry to say I won't be able to update next week, or next next week because I have tests both those weeks. TTATT**

**BUT HAVE HEART! I haven't been wasting those few weeks I haven't updated! Actually, I **_**have**_** been writing MHJ! It's just that I hadn't been writing the next chapter, because I've been actually writing parts of the epilogue. I hit upon the ending that I think most of you would like. ^^ I think... you guys would like it, and I truly hope so! So I had this really sad feeling, wrapping up this story, because Alice has been part of the better part of my years in high school (through all those hardships and exams, haha) and now that I'm also starting a Fullmetal Story (OC insert yet again. You think I would learn, but no. Would people like to read it if I started? I'm writing it anyway, but still) and it feels really sad writing the end of this story!**

**And I've been twisting all my plot strands into submission, and I've got a rough draft of where everything will go. Mukuro, the Angels, the Trials, Wend, Hibari, Tsuna, the future, the DEATH (omg) will all be answered, methinks. :3 I will still be writing several extras afterwards for questions that people still have when I end this story, so when I end I'll probably ask for questions that have been unanswered and write extras about them. ^^ But that's not now, that's later, so!**

**And the poll is going down too, now, finally! There is a majority now, so I'm sorry the shippers for the other side. I know that both sides are so wonderfully supportive of both of them really, and I **_**will**_** right an extra where Alice ends up with the other guy. You should be able to see who Alice ends up with if you view the poll on my profile now. (edit, no, you can't, because I don't know how! I guess I'll tell you the poll results in my author's note next chapter then, haha. ^^) I don't say it here, because some people don't like spoilers, yeah? XD**

**THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR VOTING! **

**(and yes, to the PMer, who I love but did not have time to reply to, I would have actually followed the romantic partner the fans chose. I loved both of them equally, see)**

**I hope you have enjoyed this chapter! Things are starting to happen, and it will (hopefully) snowball in the way I want. Sometimes the characters don't, but that's the fun in it I guess! I like wrapping everything (LIKE EVERYTHING) up, soooooooooooooooooooo**

**Please review? *mumbles* I'm so sorry I didn't update for so long. O_o At least you have an especially long chapter! I couldn't edit the whole way through, but I will… one day… when I, you know, uh, have time. I swear, I have no social life with fanfiction, uni and exams. Sigh. **

**But I love you guys anyway. Please review, tell me your opinions, and I really hope you enjoyed. ^^**


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